


Loyal Beasts

by tornadodream



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Badass Sansa Stark, Cousins kissing, Eventual sexy times, F/M, Making up my own mythology about the people of Skagos, SO MUCH DAMN ANGST, Slow Burn, only the gods can judge me, puppy dog eyes Jon Snow King of the North
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-07-21 14:07:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7390252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tornadodream/pseuds/tornadodream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"His dark eyes meet hers in a different way for once, in a fluttering in her chest, a thrill in her gut. For some reason, the urge to reach out and grab his face rushes through her brain like a gust of wind - suddenly, definitely, and it stays like the steady burn of strong ale. He doesn’t look away, and the burn steadies, grows, it’s a fire in her brain now, she can hardly think because his eyes are on her face. Because now those eyes are grazing over her face like he’s seeing her finally, the woman whose growing pains almost broke her, the woman who wouldn’t let the world break her, the woman who has come to save not only the Stark family, she has come to save him. He’s seeing her as the woman who needs Jon Snow - her father’s bastard - to be so fully in her life that it’s her only goal now, a mission that is lit with Tully ferocity, with wolf-blood rage."</p>
<p>Jon Snow and Sansa Stark will take back the North, hand-in-hand, blood of their blood, the King and Queen of the North.</p>
<p>{Multi-chap nonsense, epic adventure, Skagosi warriors included, other Starks to come later}</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Winterfell

It’s her eyes that he can't trust: Tully-blue, a sheen of softness that covers a riptide of roiling black water. Half her blood is water, is from people who command rivers, her mother’s legacy of fiery hair and stormy gaze. Her mother, the woman that separates them, he still finds her in Sansa Stark. A sharp quip, determined jawline, a steely and deceiving calm. Jon remembers Catelyn Stark like one remembers a thunderstorm, neither benevolent nor unkind, a force of nature. There are differences, ones that are glaringly obvious. Catelyn Stark was a woman who was fiercely loyal, could never understand a speck of deviance, did not nuance or mince her husband’s infidelity. Sansa had always taken her mother’s side, but he had noticed that the world had softened the edges of Sansa’s black and white, had blurred together her perception. Her stormy eyes that she inherited from her Mother peered out into the world with a level of skepticism, judging without bias, like a wolf might eye its prey - its predator - while it shouldered the edge of the woods.

Nevertheless, there’s so much of her mother in his sister, Jon can feel it radiate it off her, and it gives him pause.

Him, on the other hand?

“There’s too much of our father in you, Jon,” Sansa tells him slowly. They are sitting in the darkened great hall, now echoey with its abandon. The houses that had just declared him Lord, declared him King, have departed and now it’s just a handful of servants and her, with her bonfire hair and Tully eyes. “You trust the best in men too often,” she adds.

“A hall full of men just pledged their loyalty to House Stark,” he says, eye narrowing. “And we need as many friends we can get right now.”

She takes a sip of her wine gingerly. “They pledged their loyalty to a King of the North because they are men of the North. All men are loyal beasts when they are fed and warm. But winter is here, and men will turn into wolves and they’ll try to take over your den if they can.”

He sighs, stares deeply at the fire that was transforming into smoldering coals. “Sansa, we have to trust _somebody_.”

“And I’m not suggesting that we don’t.” A pale hand reaches across the space and rests on his knee. Her knuckles are freckled and the palm of her hand is warm; he can feel the heat even to his bones. “I’m just saying to keep yourself ever-vigilant. Our Father put his unwavering trust in people and it got him killed. Your unfettered trust in men found you on the plains of the dead as well.”

He pauses, his gaze turning from her knee-grasp to the churning sea of her eyes. He hasn't had shared this story with her, the one where a strange God ripped him from the vice of death, not yet. His men were prone to drink, and their lips were commonly loose: he should have known that it was a possibility that she had found out ages ago. But it still feels strange to find the knowledge in her, like discovering a secret you had almost forgotten about.

She gives him a crooked smile, one her mother never gave, a grin that shoulders a large amount of weight.

“You told me that we've got to start trusting each other,” she says and gives his knee a squeeze before withdrawing. “But that's a river that flows both ways. A wise king always listens to his queen.”

Jon meets her eyes, steadily. Her jaw is set firmly, and she doesn't break his gaze. The fire of her hair feels tangled up in old memories, in too many emotions, from different lives and pre-resurrection. Something inside him breaks, if only for a second, and he opens his mouth to words he hadn't thought, “And who is the Queen of the North?”

Her smile is small and she raises her goblet to her lips, drinks the rest of the wine quickly. Her lips are swollen and stained. “I'll see you in the morning, King Jon. We have many enemies, and winter is already here. We have to be careful.” She reaches across and gently pulls a white flake of ash from his hair. “And most of all, we have to stay together. Can you promise me that, Jon?”

“Aye- I promised to protect you, Sansa. I meant it.”

She doesn't smile when she says, “I've already told you: no man can promise that. Give me promises that you can keep, Jon.” The edge of her hand brushes the top of his shoulder as she exits the hall, her robes following her like a great wave.

_She’s a flood of a woman_ , he thinks, watching her leave, a thought taking root inside him, one that says, _She may just be the end of you._

-

He refuses to even go near the Lord’s Chambers, and so she takes her sleep there. It’s a great empty room that echoes painfully of the mother and father she couldn’t save. Their voices fill her nightmares and become knitted in a web of: the wine-tinged breath of a blonde-headed queen, the taste of bile that rose in her mouth when her first betrothed entered the same room as her, the cruelest smirk of her once-husband before his claws ripped through her skin, through her mind. She tangles herself in a pile of red hair, sweat, and wakes to her own screams. The room is always cold. Winter has come to quiet the world, but her brain is a place of fiery chaos.

He is there even the very first time the nightmares come in Winterfell. She doesn’t know how he hears her, her strangled yelps, but he storms through the door, sword already drawn, his hair still mussed from sleep. Ghost follows on his heels, his red eyes alert.

Her lungs feel coal-hot and her voice sounds more like a gasp as she says, “It’s okay! I’m okay!” She holds out her hand towards him as if he might strike her, as if he doesn’t know her.

When his eyes fall on her, she thinks that maybe it’s true, maybe he doesn’t know her. She can picture her face: ghost-pale, eyes red-rimmed, her mouth a chapped grim line. And more than that, she knows her brother doesn’t know her, not really. He still sees his kid half-sister, a fiery mess of naivety, a mouth full of bitter retorts, her attitude never truly kind towards the boy who reminded her that her father was a man of flawed flesh. Jon Snow is a man now, she sees that, but Sansa Stark is still a naive girl to him, even though she had cut her teeth and thickened her skin. Jon Snow still sees her as the girl who favored her mother, the girl who never fully trusted him, who never fully loved him. _How much has changed_ , she thinks, _how very much has changed_.

“Are you okay,” he says, his voice low. It’s not a question, and she eyes him in surprise. He knows that answer: she is not okay, how could she ever be okay?

Ghost hops into the bed, curls into a tight ball at her feet. A fierce beast, the softest eyes. A lump catches in her throat as she thinks of the litter of them all, tiny souls that were heading into a curse that is the Northern Stark family.

Her throat is a scratched mess, so she goes to move to get out of bed, to grab the pitcher of lukewarm wine still sitting on her nightstand, but he is quick, reaches out and grabs it first with one hand. The other hands reaches for her shoulder, pushes lightly.

“I think you should rest for a second,” his voice is still low. His fingers are cool against her skin.

“I'm fine,” she says, but her voice betrays her. She tries again: “I'll _be_ fine. I just had a bad dream. It's nothing really.”

“It is something. It's something to me,” he says, gently. He pours a stout glass of wine and hands it to her.

She takes it gingerly, managing to raise an eyebrow and say shakily, “Am I to aspire to Queen Cersei’s level of sobriety?”

His lips turn up into a genuine smile, seemingly despite himself because he appears to push against it unsuccessfully. “You deserve it,” he says before adding, “Dreams - especially the bad sort - aren't things to be taken lightly.”

She takes a small sip of the wine. It's almost cold from the morning’s frozen early hours but it slides down her throat like a balm. She closes her eyes, tries to will the hum of alcohol to come easily, quickly.

“Better?”

She opens her eyes and really sees her brother for the first time that morning. His hair was not pulled back like usual, but was askew, a thick black curl falling into his dark eyes. He looks younger now, different from the man who was usually brooding, the man with the bloodstains that followed him around and scars etched into his face. He is looking at her strangely, like he is trying to figure out who she is, who is sitting in front of him.

“Drinking shouldn’t be a single sport,” she says and sits up straighter, grabs the wine canter from her nightstand and pours a full drink. Her hands reach out, offer the drink to him. He glares at it blankly. “Oh, come on… I’d say that we _both_ deserve a drink.”

Another grin slips past him and he takes the drink timidly. He stands there for a second, holding the goblet limply, awkwardly.

Sansa sighs. “Do I have to orchestrate everything? Sit down.” She pats the bed next to her, scooting further from the edge of the bed. “This bed was meant for two, after all.” A small tendril of heat crawls into her face as she says this, but she buries her face in a gulp of wine.

Hesitantly, he settles next to her on the bed. His weight feels nice in the bed, and she wonders if the vastness of her parent’s room was making her dreams feel bigger than they really are.

But now her brother is sitting awkwardly on the edge of her bed, holding his wine glass like a man of the North would: unceremoniously and stiffly.

She lifts her glass and tips it against his. “To the King of the North!”

His face sobers when she says that, and the clink against his glass is a soft-sounding ding. He mumbles, “To the North,” and then takes a small drink.

She notices that he doesn’t shoulder the title recently anointed him, and a part of her insides shatter if only so slightly. Inside her bones she can still feel the tension that belonged to her mother, a woman of fire and water, can still feel her wounded pride at the mention of her husband’s (and not her) son. It was a preference that she hated, but it was stitched inside her, and she saw it in Jon’s face as well: they would never be rid of it, not ever, even their ghosts would carry that weight.

For a minute, they sit in silence and drink their chilled wine. They are both wearing their sleeping garments, and it dawns on her that she has nothing underneath her shift dress. It’s a strange sensation, the sudden knee-jerk reaction to cover up, but also the warm comfort of someone who wasn’t there to judge you, had already seen you in your lowest moments. She takes another sip and relaxes, forgets her clothes.

It's finally him who speaks first. “Was the nightmare… Was it about _him_?” He doesn't look at her at first, but when he does meet her eyes, his gaze is sad, full of an ache, and something else, something sharper, something angry.

She knows the _him_ he means, can feel the burning grip of Ramsay Bolton on on her skin even in the cool of the morning.

“He’s a part of it,” she admitted. “But Ramsay Bolton isn’t the worse evil I’ve seen in the world. He was simple really compared to….” and she trails off simply by shrugging. “I’ve seen a lot of blood and a lot of hate in this world, Jon. I guess it’s a price we pay for living.”

His frown is so deep that it creases his face, and his eyes flash in something strange, something almost feral. “It shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be for…. people like you.”

A snort escapes her lips. “People like me? You mean the daughter of a traitor of the King of Westeros, a woman with two failed marriages, the silly girl who almost got her last family member killed a couple days ago? People like me, Jon? Oh come now, and be -”

“Stop it.” His voice is harsh, brief, and even more wild than she thought it could be. Almost a snarl. It catches her off guard and surprise echoes through her muscles. “Stop it, now. You’re the daughter of the King of the North, the daughter of a fierce Tully Queen. And you’ve bettered evil men over and over again. You are a brave woman, Sansa Stark.” His eyes look somewhere in the distance until suddenly, his eyes reach hers. A fire is behind them, a smoldering fire in his dark eyes, eyes that hadn’t belonged to her father nor her mother. His gaze stays level with her when he says, “You deserve better than what you’ve been given. I’m going to try to give you that, no matter if it kills me.”

The silence between them is thick; Sansa can feel it boiling in her blood. It’s a strange tension, it feels different than the tension that once belonged between the two of them when they were still children and they thought they could never die. This isn’t the tension made of resentment and awkward never-said accusations of bastard and high-borns. His dark eyes meet hers in a different way for once, in a fluttering in her chest, a thrill in her gut. For some reason, the urge to reach out and grab his face rushes through her brain like a gust of wind - suddenly, definitely, and it stays like the steady burn of strong ale. He doesn’t look away, and the burn steadies, grows, it’s a fire in her brain now, she can hardly think because his eyes are on her face. Because now those eyes are grazing over her face like he’s seeing _her_ finally, the woman whose growing pains almost broke her, the woman who _wouldn’t_ let the world break her, the woman who has come to save not only the Stark family, she has come to save _him_. He’s seeing her as the woman who needs Jon Snow - her father’s bastard - to be so fully in her life that it’s her only goal now, a mission that is lit with Tully ferocity, with wolf-blood rage.

It’s a lone caw of a crow that breaks their gaze, finally. She blinks rapidly, inhales the rest of her wine and says, “We need to get some more sleep. We’ve got a long journey waiting for us, and Skagos isn’t a land meant to be navigated by the sleep-deprived.”

A grim smile breaks on his face as he grumbles, “It isn’t made for anyone really.”

“I agree,” she says before finishing off the last of her wine. Her brain buzzes lightly and the morning air feels slightly warmer. “But if the legends of them are half true, they’re a fierce folk to be fighting for the Stark name.” Reaching out, she curls her fingers into his. They are calloused-tough, strong-muscled, fit strangely well against her palm. “I think they will find that their new King is more wolf than man - it’s a trait that those loyal to the old gods will appreciate.”

His face contains a very strange emotion, one she cannot decipher. Then he says, “And if they aren’t impressed by me, I think the Queen of the North will put the fear of all the gods back in their bones.”

She laughs lightly, but inside her his words resound: _the Queen of the North_. She’s heard him correct, she’s sure of it. It feels like the words are blooming inside her, a tight bud of light, a flower of some fruit she’s never tasted before.

His hand is still in her own when he asks, “Would it better if Ghost stayed with you? Just… he’s a hunk of heat if nothing more.” Ghost raises his great head, turns it in a question, like he is asking permission to stay next to her feet.

She reaches out, presses her hand against Ghost’s muzzle. “Would you care to stay with me, you horrific beast, you?” Ghost merely whimpers in reply.

They untangle their hands, and he’s about to take leave, when she says, quietly, “Jon… would you?”

He stops, he’s almost at the door, and his face is tired, but he’s fully focused on her.

She blinks and looks in her lap. “Would you stay here? Stay here with us?” She looks up, can feel the heat in her face. “Just until I can sleep? I’m… It would make this room not feel so damned empty.”

It’s the exact opposite request that a high-born lady should make, she knows it even to the middle of her lungs. The Sansa Stark that left Winterfell for the South would be appalled. Her mother would be appalled. She knows it all. But all those formalities, they had failed her repeatedly, crumbled in her heart, so they only remained like a troublesome weight inside her. So formalities be damned, she just needed the weight of another person beside her, needed the weight of another soul to assure her that she wasn’t alone in this cold world, not anymore.

Jon opens his mouth, closes it. And then, soundlessly, he removes his baldric, his belt, his boots, lays them neatly on her knitting chair by the hearth. He crawls into the bed, on top of the fur coverings. His back is to her, but his knees are curled and his feet are arched into the white fur of Ghost’s hind quarters. He says nothing to her, but it’s enough.

She watches as his breathing becomes steady with sleep. The birds caw in the early morning air, and Ghost moans in his sleep. Her eyelids become heavy and she falls asleep with the distinct impression that she is _home_ and that she has a family, finally, once again.


	2. Skagos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "As they enter Kingshouse’s Great Keep, she feels him next to her, his shaggy horse huffing beside her. Then, gently, his gloved fingers on her elbow. When she looks at him, he is looking ahead, not at her, and she knows the touch is an instinct, one that she has started to adjust to, the touch of Jon Snow, the King of the North, the man she has just gotten to know for the first time in her life."
> 
> Completely self-constructed Skagosi myth. Stark ~feels~. Sexy times in the next chapter.

The island rises like a gray giant in front of them. The Bay of Seals is an icy slate of angry water, pitching their ship every direction. Several of his men turn a fetid shade of green as they approach the rocky coast, many losing the contents of their guts over the side of the bridge. Ghost keeps s steady footing, but eyes him with a look of skepticism in his blood-red eyes. Sansa’s face, however, remains stony, resolute, unaffected by the turbulent seas. Her furs are wrapped tightly around her pale cheeks, and she stares up at him with _those eyes_.

“Will we be even able to dock the ship?” She asks, her voice even despite the concern buried inside, somewhere.

He doesn’t answer at first, because he honestly cannot lie to her: he doesn’t know. Skagos is a wild land. When he had first disclosed to Davos that he was planning to visit, the onion knight raised a thick, gray eyebrow.

“They say that they’re cannibals, my Lord.”

“Sure. That’s why I want them on _our_ side,” he had told him, but his words were from another mouth, from a Tully-eyed woman who held nightmares in her lungs.

That explanation had been enough for both Lord Davos Seaworth and for Tormund Giantsbane, who had merely laughed at the mention of cannibals and guffawed with: “That’s the worse you got? Wait until you meet _real_ monsters, King Jon!”

He wonders if their resolve is dissolving in the sight of the island as it rears it’s wolf-head crags ahead of them. Sansa, for her credit, looks non-plussed.

She points over to a bay to their left, possibly five miles. “We should dock there. See how the waters break further from the shore? The water will still be deep enough, but calmer.”

He squints into the gray horizon and where her pale finger is pointing. She’s right - there’s an inlet that breaks the surf long before the palm of the land curves into Skagos.

Calling to the captain, Jon orders the boat to turn fifteen degrees east, and they head towards the calmer waters. For once more in his life, Jon thanks the old water gods of Tully for getting him through another mess.

They anchor the ship almost seamlessly. The wake does break over the bow, shaking salty freezing water onto their heads, a baptism of sorts.

She shouts at him over the thunder of the breaking surf, “Welcome to the wild islands of the North, King Jon.”

They had sent sparrows to the House Magnar, House Crowl, House Stane, but the olive branch to them was the first extended in generations. The men and women of Skagos where a wild folk, descendants of the First Men, and although in legend they pledged to House Stark, they laughed in the face of the Westeros rule. They are a people of wild winters, they do not sow, they are mountain folk of blood and anger.

The row into the pebbled beaches takes nearly half an hour. Sansa holds a cloak close to her face, but she keeps her eyes on the shoreline. He watches her face more than he cares to admit, drawing strength from her determined gaze.

The island rears a great gray head of rock in front of them, the tops crowned with snow and ice.

“Looks like home,” Tormund yells in his ear and when he stares to look at the wildling, a wide smirk parts his mass of red beard.

Jon grins only shortly at him before his mouth is set in a grim line. The Skagos people were a tiny faction of the North’s population, almost not worth the trip. But Sansa had argued with him  steadily that every man was needed, and the Skagosi were miners, drawing copper and iron and obsidian from deep inside their pointed mountains. Their weapons were sharp, well-made, and deadly; it was better to not be at the receiving end of them.

They also had the advantage of being close enough to the Wall but with a large plot of icy sea to separate it from the rest of Westeros.

“A strategic hiding place,” Sansa had told him, her pale, freckled finger on the map they kept in the library tower. They had plotted the trip with Davos and Brienne, who were mostly silent. “If the White Walkers _do_ get past the Wall and march south, we may need to regroup in a secure location. And you said they didn’t follow you in the Shivering Sea, right, Jon?”  

The battle of Hardhome had flashed briefly before his eyes, he could hear the bones rattling, the dead cascading off the bluffs that surrounded the city. He blinked it away and said slowly, “Aye. They didn’t follow us. Not then at least.”

“Pardon me, my lord, my lady,” Brienne said, her voice a strong baritone against the library’s stoned walls. “But we have other enemies to worry about as well. The Lannisters are not a foe to discard either. And Cersei is not a woman known for her mercy and forgiveness. You are still very much a wanted woman, Lady Sansa.”

“Exactly,” Sansa clipped. “I would like to see Cersei try to cross the Bay of Seals in all her finery. The more North we get, the more uneasy the kingdoms in the South become. And that’s why we need the people of Skagos on our side.”

And so there they were, sliding their boats onto the rocky shores of Skagos. Ghost dismounts from the boat and dives into frothy tide, looks back imploringly to them. He offers his hand to Sansa as they disembark, the men crashing shin-deep into the icy waters before pulling the stern aground. She raises an eyebrow before dismounting the boat as seamlessly as dismounting a horse, her velvet and fur robes damp from the sea that lick the shoreline. He stands there for a second with his hands still outstretched before he grins crookedly into the thin air, chuckling at her stubbornness.  

And now they were here, and the only sound is the crash of the waves, a bitter wind whistle, and the far off cry of ravens. In front of them, a thick birch and pine forest crawls close to the shoreline, their knuckles of root breaking up the pebbled beach. The shoreline ascends quickly into rocky cliffs, then to bluffs, then to the icy points of great fingers of mountain. It’s a place like nothing he has seen before, a world that he feels he has no right to step foot into, even if he is technically their King.

They appear like they have dissolved out of the forest in front of them, a fist full of them, all riding shaggy massive horses. They ride in a formation, easily, like migrating birds: a perfect “v” shape. As they approach, he sees the person at the crest of the “V” is a woman, a look of ferocity on her face that even the most dullest man could decipher as a calling card for a deadly warrior. Half her hair is shaved and under the thin layer of blonde hair, he can see a webwork of bright green tattoos. On her head, pulled tight by a leather strap buckled at the base of her skull, is a long horn that rises from the center of her forehead. She’s covered in furs and leather.

His men stand on alert, each one with their hands on their sword’s hilt. A low rumble of growl reverberates from Ghost, the beast’s ribcage pressed against his shins. He reaches for his own sword, feels the cool metal of Longclaw against his hands, eyes the pack coming towards them. Beside him, he sees Sansa stiffen, her back becoming straight. Her eyes turn an icy shade.

A half dozen meters separate them before the group of Skagosi stop, the woman’s hand raised to indicate to her men that a pause was necessary. Silence sits thick in the air before she speaks, “You are Jon Snow, new King of the North, the bastard of Eddard Stark, the former 998th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, the leader of the Free Folk.”

Jon swallows, the woman’s words almost salty in his mouth. “Is that a question?” He asks, his eyes narrowing.

The woman urges her horse closer, but gingerly. As she rides towards them, her face becomes clearer - it’s almost attractive, pale and symmetrical, if not for a large scar that splits her features almost in two, descending angrily over one of her eyes and parting the hair of her brow like a lightening bolt.

“Yes, it is a question,” she says, and she’s only a few feet from where they all stand. A thick rod of metal pierces the septum of her nose. “Because I have been told to retrieve Jon Snow and bring him to King Thuran Magnar, Lord of Kingshouse. And if you are not him, I will have no choice to kill all of you and feast on your livers for dinner.”

He expects a small gasp from Sansa, but when he finds her in the corner of her eye, there’s a small ghost of a smile on her face, a strange and deliciously dark glee in her eyes.

“Well, fortunately for my own liver and my party, I am him who you speak of. I am... the King of the North.” He says the words measurably, but he finds his tongue clumsy over the title.

The woman speaks again, “And who are the others? I have no orders to accommodate them, so I suggest they get back in their boat and row far away from the shores of Skagos if they value their lives.”

He’s about to speak when a voice, strong and defiant, interrupts him: “I am Sansa Stark, Lady of Winterfell, daughter of King Eddard Stark, heir of the bloodline of Northern Men and their houses,” she pauses and then adds, “And, according to some Maesters, I have the blood of the Skagosi in my body, my father’s grandmother, handed down to the Starks still alive today.” She takes another step closer to the Skagosi warrior, the sheen of something devious in her Tully eyes.

The woman regards Sansa for a long second, and Jon feels his heart churn cold in his chest. His grip on the hilt of Longclaw turns tighter. But then, the woman grins, a very small one, and says, “Well, you’re either a fool or a Skagosi to say those words, Lady Stark. Shall we see which one you really are?” She rides closer and offers a hand down to her. “Come! I was told to bring the heir of King Eddard Stark to my father, King of Skagos. We have pledged ourselves to House Stark, a tie bound in blood. We will not abandon our blood, not now, especially now that winter is here.”

Sansa stares up in the Skagosi woman’s face, before taking her hand, letting the woman pull her up. She mounts the shaggy beast easily, straddling it with her thighs. Raising an eyebrow, he can’t help but see the glee painted all over her face. _Tully eyes_ , he thinks, _but a Northern spirit_.

He makes a move forward, as does the rest of the men. It’s the wrong move; the entire Skagosi pack pulls out their swords, which gleam dark in the dull winter light.

“Dragonglass,” he hears Sir Davos whisper next to him. And sure enough, the entire length of each Skagosi blade is made of the black sheen of obsidian. They are shorter blades than his greatsword, but they are sharpened to deadly points. He knows instantly that they are not to messed with.

Jon holds up his hands to show that his grip is empty of any weapon and steps forward. “These are my men, the King’s Men. If I am to go to Lord Magnar, then they must go with me.”

The woman shakes her head, and a thin sliver of blonde hair falls in her dark gray eyes. “Those are not my orders. I am to bring the heir - or _heirs_ as I now see - to the King. He has no pleasure with these other men.”

There is a strangled silence, filled only with the huffy breathing of the horses. Diplomacy - mincing words - were not a specialty of Jon Snow. If these same Skagosi had broken through the forest in full battle-tilt, he would have been far more comfortable. Now, at this weird juncture of negotiation, he feels lost, not sure when to unsheathe his blade or to turn around and run.

Her voice fills the void, full of a confidence that could never fill his own: “Sir Davos, please report back to Lady Brienne at Winterfell that we will return in a fortnight. I suspect there will be no trouble, but nevertheless, please send for a ship if we have not returned by that time.” She stares down at Jon, her eyes giving him this message: _We must acquiesce. Don’t fight this battle with_ _Valyrian_ _steel, Jon Snow_ . 

He turns to Davos, whose panic was on display in a pair of tightly-knit brows. “She’s right, Sir Davos. Return to Winterfell, keep track of the moon. We’ll return successful in a fortnight.” And he took a turn to raise his eyebrows and a nod towards Sansa as if to end with: _And if not, come back to get her, and that’s an order_.

No one says anything. It’s finally Tormund who mumbles, “Well, this is a load of shite if I ever heard it.” But he removes his grip from his sword hilt, shakes his head in surrender.

“Very well, my Lord,” Sir Davos adds to the dialogue, nodding his head in compliance. The other men who’ve joined them set their lips in a grim line. “We will return in a fortnight, by the very hour. You have my word.”

Jon watches their boat make its way toward the ship, watches it become a dot, then a dark pinprick, and then almost a gray ghostly outline. A small burn of anxiety rises in his throat as they leave, knowing that it’s only him left to protect the fierce woman sitting astride a Skagosi warrior’s steed.

Ghost does not move, and Jon nods at him and says, “My wolf will not leave me. You might as well kill us both if you plan on separating us.”

The woman grins devilishly. “Aye - direwolves are not the sort of creature to abandon. Very well. Take your red-eyed beast with you.” She whistles lightly, an ethereal sort of noise and says, “We have brought your own ride, King Snow.” A man at the rear of the pack pulls along another horse behind him, steers it towards him. Now that he’s closer to the beast, he sees it’s a strange mixture between horse and heifer, the limbs thick and muscled, gait slower than a gelding. He’d heard the stories of Skagos’ creatures, stories of unicorns, woolly rhinos, of blood-stained chins of cannibals, but the world here feels beautifully primal and comfortable, like settling into the furs of your own bed after months away. He meets the soft brown gaze of his steed and then quickly mounts it, slides his feet into the stirrups, and then says, “We’re looking forward to meeting your Lord.”

The Skagosi woman smiles and says, “You mean my father. I am the rightful heir of House Magnor, Lord Leona, firstborn of my name. Welcome to the truest Northern Island, King Snow. We’ve been awaiting a visit from House Stark for many years. Many, many years.”  

-

They ride the edge of a mountain for hours, the wind whipping in their faces cruelly. She can feel the skin on her face turning hard, then swollen, then the pinch of blisters. She tries to bury her face in the back of Lord Leona, who faces the wind unflinchingly, but it doesn’t matter. The cold still finds her, a cold that she has never experienced once in her Northern home of Winterfell.

She looks back several times at Jon, but his face is usually obscured by the other men, the thick wool of the horses, by the icy snow that keeps falling relentlessly. When she does catch his face, he meets her eyes instantly, a question inside them, one of: _Are you safe_? In return, she offers him the same question in a grin. But Jon Snow was a member of the Night’s Watch, she thinks, a man who has battled beyond the Wall. The mountains of Skagos were nothing more than the same-old climate he was used to. He was, afterall, Stark blood, a man of Northern Kings, descendent of Bael the Bard. Of course he was safe, she thinks. He probably feels like he has come home.

They continue to ride for hours, before they reach a crest in the mountain. The road narrows considerably, only wide enough for a couple inches of shoulder. Risking a glance to the side, she sees only the crashing waves of the Shivering Sea and the rocky lips of cliffs beneath then. A rise of bile burns in her throat, but she swallows it defiantly. She isn’t the old Sansa Stark, who used to sing love songs and wait for a prince to save her. She is not shaken by threat of death anymore, now that she knows that death is easy, it’s the living part that’s difficult.

Rounding the crest, the sight in front of them almost takes her breath away. She had been told the tales of the Skagos, it had been passed around like a moral nightmare: _if you’re an evil girl, you could be shipped off to the island of Skagos, where they crawl in caves, eat the brains of their brothers, live in forever winters_.

But the structure - nay, _the city_ \- in front of her is so incredibly alive and bright and warm that she finds her jaw go slack. It is a structure carved entirely in the mountain, a city of stone. A plethora of bonfires were nestled at the top of each turret, lighting the surrounding area. A chasm surrounded the entire city and only a drawbridge made of white birchwood offers passage across.

Leona hears her sharp intake of breathe, because she cranes her neck towards her and yells over the icy wind, “Welcome to the Kingshouse, Lady Stark, capital of the stoneborn. All the legends you have been told since you were a babe are all true and all wrong.”

They cross the birch bridge slowly. The woods creaks lowly underneath them, but stays true. Jon gains ground from the back of the pack and strides up next to her and Lord Leona. He rides so close to her on the bridge that his shoulder brushes hers, the fur of the cloak she has made for him tickling against her neck.  

“Well,” he says to her, so quiet she almost cannot hear him, “I haven’t seen any cannibals yet. I suppose that’s a good sign.”

She smiles a half-grin. “Or maybe they think you don’t look especially appetizing.”

He lifts an eyebrow at her before offering her a wide grin, one that makes her insides warm like a good pint of ale. It has dawned her that she had never seen her brother smile like this before, not when she was a snotty young girl who once held resentment for him like someone holds a secret inside their heart. If someone had told her only a short few years ago that she would be riding as the eldest of her name with her bastard half-brother to the savage island of Skagos in order to save Winterfell from an army of White Walkers to the North and a brood of Baratheon Kings in the South, she would have laughed mirthfully. But, now, she wants nothing more than the press of his shoulder against his arm, his smile burning pleasantly in her brain. She wants nothing more to fight for her Northern home with _him_.

As they approach the gates to Kingshouse, a shrill whistle comes from above, one that sounds almost bird-like in in timbre. Craning her neck, she can see figures moving around the craggy ramparts, black against the gray stone, all alert. Leona moves next to her, reaches to a hook in her baldric and removes a long horn, must like the one she wore on her forehead, except it is spiraled at the end. She raises it to her lips, blows into it, and a long, low sound echoes through it, through the mountain enclave, echoes down into her lungs.

The castle’s drawbridge falls, a thick and heavy thing, made of pine and the sides edged with the sharp blade of obsidian. They cross it slowly, Jon riding next to them. She steals a glance over to him, and his eyes are wide against his face and she has to suppress a knowing smile. Despite all he’s seen, despite the pain and death and giants and magic he’s seen, Jon Snow was still the boy who left Winterfell, idealistic about the world around him, full of wonder and honor. A part of her aches for a brief second to feel that again, to reach deep and find the Sansa Stark who used to sing the songs of fairytales, the one who believed in a sweet clean love, who believed that if you were good and beautiful enough, the world would bloom around her. But she pushes against the ache, straightens her lips. She’s grown now, has found the bitter disappointment while still in her youth. Now she knew the only things worth fighting for was the blood that brought you into this world.

When they cross the castle’s threshold, the gates shut tightly behind them, and the world in front of her comes alive.

The people of Winterfell had their myths of their Skagosi neighbors, she had heard them while she was still a babe. They were a people of girth, descended from the First Men and from the Ibbenese, a people of Giants. They were also uncivilized to their core, breaking fast with human flesh, raping their freshly-wed brides, warring amongst themselves often. She had been told that while in theory they pledged to House Stark, they pledged themselves to no one really, not even their own King and Lord, pledged only to the crueller of the old gods.  But she had also heard the legends of great warriors, fierce in their battles, who rode on the backs of unicorns, woolly rhinos, who would eat the hearts of their enemies for the power it would give them.

But the people around her are only half-myth. They are all tall, and broad-shouldered, even the women. Their bodies are clad in a thick garments of fur and leather, and they only consider the lot of them briefly before they move on.

The courtyard they belonged in was half inside the hollow of a great mountain’s cave and half exposed to the outdoors, but inside the gates, it is exceedingly warmer. She takes the whole yard in with breathlessness: everywhere are hot springs, flowing in trenches that are no-doubtedly man made, an assortment of garden around them, growing an assortment of everything green and leafy, including patches of what looks like a glowing lichen.

Jon reaches down, runs his hand over the plant, his hand glowing a pale yellow against the leaves. Everything in the castle is aglow with it, she notices, including the creases of his face, the lines where scars etch into his pale forehead.

“Ye never seen fairymoss before?” Leona asks her. Sansa looks up, raises an eyebrow.

“Never,” she replies. “How does it work?”

Leona shrugs and says, “It’s a gift from the old gods, but our folk know that it’s something that runs true through the leaves. It only grows in the Skagos mountains, in our hot springs.” She lowers her upper body, pulls up a handful of fairymoss and throws some of it in her mouth. “And it’ll do for eating if you’re hungry enough. And you’ll be hungry enough now that winter is here.” Unclasping her palm, Leona offers a bit to Sansa. She takes it gingerly, chews it slowly: it tastes like earth and wet soil and not much else, but it goes down easily enough. An odd thrill races down her spine, the old Sansa who still yearned for adventure rising in her throat like a strange mixture of fear and excitement.

“It also stains the mouth and lips for a bit,” Leona adds with a wry grin, and Sansa can see it lining the back part of the Skagosi’s lips in a glow that shines even in the dim winter light.

She turns to Jon, who eyes her with a look of amusement. “Is it on my face?” She mouths at him and, in reply, he only laughs.

“You’re a sight for the King of Skagos to see,” he mumbles, drawing his horse closer to her. He cranes his neck nearer to her ear so that he can almost whisper, “The Starks finally come to visit Kingshouse and it’s a redheaded Tully with glowing lips and a bastard son. What a fine pair we make.”

She wants to frown at him, but she realizes that this is his version of humor. He has never been one who excelled at it, so she simply rolls her eyes, tries to rub her lips with the back of her hand. His small chuckle makes her smile turn larger.

They enter a smaller courtyard, and they are almost completely inside the mountain’s yawning insides.The hot springs flow through here so much that it’s almost balmy. It’s lit almost completely by the fairymoss with the exception of one stripe of gray light that falls down from a hole in the cave ceiling. It falls dustily on the one tree in the courtyard, the largest weirwood tree she’s ever seen, ever, even larger than the heart tree of Winterfell. The tree’s roots break the ground beneath them, the leaves bloody crimson and casting shadows through the small courtyard.

“Some say we were born from the tree, the Skagos people,” Leona says next to her. “Blood of my blood, blood of your blood. They say the womb of the world is in the South, a place of men and horses. But we know the truth: the world began in the icy maw of the North.”

She looks into the gray light as it falls on the white bark of the weirwood, something strange stirring in her veins. But before she can figure out what is all means, Leona says, “Come! My Father, Lord of Kingshouse, has been waiting, and he is not a man known for his patience.”

As they enter Kingshouse’s Great Keep, she feels him next to her, his shaggy horse huffing beside her. Then, gently, his gloved fingers on her elbow. When she looks at him, he is looking ahead, not at her, and she knows the touch is an instinct, one that she has started to adjust to, the touch of Jon Snow, the King of the North, the man she has just gotten to know for the first time in her life.

-

They have dismounted, left the shaggy beasts on a stable that straddles Kingshouse’s Great Keep. He walks close to Leona and Sansa and notices for once how tall Leona really is. Taller than Lady Brienne, much taller than Sansa, much taller than his own stature. He had heard the rumors of giants, but he had suspected that it was all farce. But now he sees he is wrong, or sort of, that half of everything he had ever heard about the Skagosi is true. They don’t crawl in caves, they thrive in them, and the people here are strong and seem full of gusto.

Leona leads them through a hallway, lit by only the phosphorescence of the fairymoss. Somewhere in the distance he can hear the echoes of men and women talking, shouting, creating a general ruckus.

“The council has been called for your arrival,” Leona says. She shakes her half-mane of long blonde hair, releasing tiny ice pellets all over the room. “None of the reigning Lords have met the Stark family, the Kings of the North. You’ve drawn… quite a crowd.”

He frowns. “Is that a good or a bad thing?”

Her lips turn into a wry grin. “With Skagos, you can never be quite sure.”  With a quick stomp of both her boots, she waves her hands towards both him and Sansa. “Come! We’ve made them wait for too long already.”

They follow Leona down a long passage, again lit only by fairymoss. Ghost sniffs eagerly at the moss, his nose twitching, but the rest of him seemingly at ease, like he has finally found a place that feels solidly like home.

He sneaks a glance at Sansa; although he knows that she is trying to keep a level of steeliness to her gaze, the woman that she’s constructed in the tenure of her new broken life, a gleam is in her eyes, her face looking alive for the first time in a long while. He feels a strange emotion move inside him, and he has to force himself to look away from her pale face glowing in the cave’s light.

The hallways empties into a large cavern, lit by moss and torch. Around them is a row of stone-cut benches, all of them full of the wide-shouldered people of Skagos. They hardly notice them as they walk into the middle of the semi-circle, but instead keep guffawing and arguing and carrying on various conversations.

Directly in front of them was a man, larger than everyone by far. He sat on a throne made of what looked like birch and pine, with the top crowned with a littering of sharp obsidian points.

“They’re a fan of dragonglass,” he whispers in Sansa’s ear.

“Good,” she mumbles back. “We’re going to need as much of it as they are willing to give.”

The man in front of them turns from a conversation that he’s having with a barrel-chested teenager and glares down at the three of them. His blonde hair matches a thick long beard grows almost down to his sternum. His face, like Leona’s, is heavily-scarred, and he has three metal rods pierced on his face: one through his septum, one through his left eyebrow, and one through the cartilage topping his left ear. A crown circles his head, but it is made of leather, bone, and the same type of horn that Leona wore strapped to the the center of his forehead. His horn is larger, spirals twice before ending at a sharp, narrow point.

He measures them with a mischievous look in his eyes for a long second. He slams a meaty fists down on the arm of his chair, three times. “Alright, the lot of ye, shut the hell up.” His voice echoes throughout the entire hall, a thick bass. “Our distinguished guests are here.”

They don’t all listen at first, so the man hammers harder and yells again, “Shut up, all of ye.” The hall eventually quiets, only a small murmur amongst some of the younger (although no less larger) members the only sounds in the whole hall.

The quiet permeates everywhere, and Jon looks around wide-eyed. The hall is crowded, full of Skagosi. The man in front of him is flanked by a man and woman, both wearing their own horned headband. They are smaller, younger, but look no less fierce. They regard both Sansa and him with a measure of mirth, and when no one speaks for a long time, the man on throne taps a hefty finger on the arm on his chair and says, “They say that Eddard Stark was a man of few words. Are you of even fewer, Jon Snow, King of the North?”

He blinks and suddenly he realizes he is being asked a question by this giant of a man. He stumbles for a second before saying, “Aye. I’m not known for my loquacity, my Lord. Apologies, as I’m a better soldier than politician.”

The man’s face offers a sly smile. “I share your talents, King Snow. Not much for words, but damn good with a sword. I’ve heard diplomacy is a special talent of your Queen.” His eyes shift to Sansa and he offers her a warmer grin. “I don’t know how the Starks almost find themselves such fine-looking wives, but you bastards always manage to get the cream of the crop.”

A small amount of heat creeps into his face but he blurts out without measuring his words, “She’s my sister, Sansa Stark.”

There’s a small titter of noise around them, and Jon wants to bite his tongue until it bleeds. He realizes that what he just said has given everyone the wrong impression and when he casts his eyes over to Sansa, she is throwing him a look that might drop him dead in his place.

The King of Skagos guffaws, a loud “ha!” before he belts out, “I thought the Targaryens were the only ones who had a leanings towards their own sister and brother folk, but if I had a sister as fine as her, I would probably consider otherwise as well!” He pounds a thick fist against his chair and bellows out another laugh, which literally shakes the grounds beneath him.

His mouth goes to correct himself, quickly, but suddenly he feels a cool finger against his wrist, holding him in place. He casts a furtive look down and finds Sansa staring at him with those eyes, that thunderstorm of a gaze and he can read what she is saying to him soundlessly: _let me do the talking from now on, Jon Snow_. Clamping his mouth shut, he nods shortly to her. She’s right after all, he’ll only make more of a mess of himself, and this is the game she excels best at.

The King in front of them wipes a tear of mirth from his eye before saying, “Speaking of kin, both my wee brother, the Lord Crowl of Deepdown and my sister Lady Stane of Driftwood Hall is here, specially for you. And I am King Thuran Magnar, King of Skagos, eldest of my name.” The man and woman next to him nod, only slightly. “It’s been three generations since the Stark family came to Skagos, when your great-grandfather came to claim his Magnar bride, my aunt. A long time for a King not to come visit their subjects. A long time for family not to visit their blood.”

The hall hums for a second, and he can feel the tension rising off the giant men and women around him. He reaches for the hilt of Longclaw - he’s lived too much in moments like this before, when blood turns hot and when men start thinking violently rather than logically.

“A grave mistake on my family’s part,” Sansa says suddenly, her voice loud, clear, unflappable. The hall quiets, and surprise and a warm wave of pride washes over Jon at the authority hinging on her voice. She continues, “I’ve been told stories of the land of Skagos ever since I was only a child. You have been people of myth, and I see that half of the legends are true. I know now that the Skagos people are people of the North, hearty and clever, people of our blood. Our visit is long overdue, but hopefully not unwelcome.”

The hall has quieted, and they are all looking at her, looking at the Queen of North. The same strange emotion that haunts him now rises in his chest, in his throat as he sees her lift her chin, give him a look out of the corner of her eyes before she says, “And I come to you now, to my countryman, as your Queen, in a time when the North needs you more than ever before.”

“Aye, I see,” Thuran bellows, a cruel smile twisting on his lips. “I knew we weren’t long for the truth! You wish for the Iron Throne for ye own, eh?”

Sansa shakes her head, a mess of her fire-hair falling into her eyes. “If we’re going to the quick of truth, I won’t mince my words: Cersei Lannister and her blonde-headed bastards can take the throne and rot with it.” The hall erupts, and the reaction is delighted laughs, a few cheers. Thuran’s grin turns from sarcastic to pleasantly surprised. She pauses, and the entire hall is rapt by her speech.

The determined line of her jaw catches him, and the strange emotion grows in him, somewhere close to his sternum.

Then she says, louder this time, “I've come to the brave land of Skagos for one reason only. Your King was once Commander of the Knight’s Watch and traveled beyond the Wall. He has seen winter coming, seen it crawl down south for years now. And he's seen more.” She stops and her eyes meet his. “He's seen the white walkers, has seen the army of the dead. You know they are real and they have been waiting. And while the South squabbles over a silly throne, they are coming for us. They come with the winter and winter is here. Only the North can defend from the winter, and you are the most Northern of our neighbors, of our blood.” She stops, the entire hall on her very breath, and so is he, he is enraptured by the heat in the apples of her cheeks, a fire lit right underneath the ice of her eyes. A small explosion happens near his lungs, near his heart, near his throat. He thinks, _She’s the end of you, Jon Snow_.

“When the walkers come, we will meet them with the ferocity of the North,” she finally says. “I want you to be with us, but we will do it without you if we must.” She turns, stares Thuran dead in his eyes. “What say you, Thuran Magnar, King of Skagos? Will you join us, your cousins from Winterfell? Will you join your King?”

The giant king regards the both of them for a long moment, then slams his fist definitively on his chair’s arm with a tone of finality. “I had my doubts about ye, young Queen Stark. They said you were a woman of fire and water rather than ice and wolf. But I know now that you are a true Stark, and your blood and courage runs true. The first Long Night, we stood with the old gods and the First Men and fought the White Walkers until they were driven back to the Icy Hell they belong. So, Westeros be damned! So the Iron Throne be damned! We will stand with our blood, we will stand with _you_ , our King and Queen of North, and we will fight the real war when it comes.” He stands, and for the first time, Jon can see the full length of him, over seven feet of tall muscle and thick bone. He bows his head, the horn of his head pointing to the ground. “Skagos will fight with you, King Snow and Queen Stark.  We will shield your back, and keep your counsel, and give our lives for yours if need be. I swear it by the old gods, the gods of the North.”

She smiles, says evenly back, “And we vow that you shall always have a place by our hearth.” She walks towards him and without looking at him, she rolls her fingers into his palm. He feels the press of Wolf against their legs, all three of them joined. Her face is glowing, pale but warm, beaming like the sun on a perfect winter’s day. “We pledge to ask no service of you that may bring you dishonor. We swear it by the old gods, the gods of the North.”

“So be it!” Thuran roars and then the halls erupts into a cacophony of exuberant shouting and the loud mess of meaty fists slamming against chairs and bleachers. He watches wide-eyed as an entire room of Giants, men and women of old blood and fierce face look at him, look at _her,_ with eyes of passion, eyes that pledge something old and true. Again, Jon Snow feels the weight of the title of King of North inside his chest, a title that he had never even rolled through his mind as a possibility, not him the bastard son.

Over the yells and the stomping of the crowd, Thuran descends from the platform that holds the three thrones, his footsteps causing tiny tremors through the grand hall. He strides to them easily. His frame loomed large over them as he lay his wide palms against their shoulders.

His grin is wry when he bellows, “Tomorrow, we seal our union the Skagosi way! With a hunt!”

The audience erupts again, the stomping so loud that he can almost not hear the Skagos King say, “Have ye ever hunted a unicorn afore?”

-

Leona takes them to their chambers, a large room nestled deep in the womb of the mountain. A hissing fire is already alight in the hearth and the room is occupied by furniture piled with furs. On the middle of the room stands the largest bed he has ever seen, carved from a marbled stone. It’s meant for two Skagosi to engage in almost any activity together. Jon gulps heavily, unable to qualm a burning feeling in his throat.

Sansa, however, seems nonplussed. She nods at Leona and says, "This is lovely. Thank you and your family for the hospitality that has far exceeded any expectations.”

Leona laughs and winks at her, “Far less starving cannibals than expected?”

“Disappointingly so.” Sansa's face twists in a small grin.

Continuing to chuckle, Leona said, “Well, unfortunately, we’ll have to disappoint you again: we’re serving wild boar and a lot of good drink for dinner. No human livers t’all. Will you all be joining us for a pint of mead in the great hall, or shall I have your dinner sent up?”

Jon was about to say something about the food being brought up -  the dark circles under Sansa’s eyes are undeniable even in the dim light of the room - but she stops him with, “Don’t be ridiculous. We will be down shortly.”

“Good on ye,” Leona bellows and before she leaves she winks and says, “You two have fun.” It’s a pointed remark and he feels his cheeks aflame, even though he can’t figure out why, why the insinuations and implications settle like a strange flame inside his lungs.

The door to the chamber shudders shut and Ghost runs to it to sniff gingerly underneath before taking a perimeter of the room.

“He’s vigilant,” Sansa says, her voice light. He looks up at her, catches her face lit lowly by the fire. She stoops down, reaches for Ghost’s muzzle. The direwolf stares at her gently before pressing himself against her palms.

She smiles down at Ghost, runs her fingers through the scruff of his neck, and something in him breaks at her smiling face, breaks another piece of something mysterious inside of him.

“He’s stuck with me through some tough spots,” he says, a grin finding its way on his face. “Including that one time where I died.”

For once, in the entire time he’s known her, she laughs. A solid chuckle, and she throws back a sway of her Tully-red hair. “Ah, yes, _that_.”

He revels in that moment for a second, this tiny moment where the both of them are happy and fine and laughing for a second. Her face, younger and warmer for once, before the world put a hardness there, a wall as tall and formidable as the one he guarded in another life.

“They’re nothing like I thought,” she says finally, still crouched and her hands placed on the crown of Ghost’s head.

He kneels before her and Ghost, places his hands on the vertebrae of the great direwolf’s warm body. “They’re something what I thought,” he says. “They’re fierce. And I don’t trust them, not fully. Also, apparently, I’m hunting a unicorn tomorrow.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You mean _we’re_ hunting a unicorn tomorrow.”

He meets her eyes. “Sansa…” he warns, but she stops him short.

“I don’t want to hear it, Jon.” She doesn’t look at him, looks instead into the white depths of Ghost’s fur. “I’ve spent my whole life being shielded. I’m done with that. I’m more tough than I look.”

He’s quiet for a long second, surveys her furrowed brows, her pinched lip. It had dawned on him a long time ago that the Sansa Stark that he left in Winterfell all those years ago has changed now. She’s still her mother’s daughter, still the fierceness of Catelyn Stark, but she’s no longer the girl who sang little songs about princes and true love and the same girl who let her disdain for him only simmer at the corner of their relationship. But he knows now that this woman is fierce and brave without being a brute, without being a bully. She was savvier than their father, but less stiffed-necked than her mother, and he knew that she had transformed into this power that was to be reckoned with.

“I know,” he says, hardly louder than a whisper. “You’re deceptively tough, Sansa. I’m even a little scared of you.”

Her eyes find him quickly, a delighted surprise on her face. Her lips twist into a smirk and she says, “Mother always said it was good that husbands be a little scared of their wives.”

He closes his eyes slowly, relishing this moment of quiet before he dives into his own awkward shame: his slip of the tongue that’s tangled them into a very complex and not-yet-denied deception. “I’m so sorry, Sansa,” he says before stumbling on, “You know I don’t have the… finesse that you have. I’ve always been better at battle than at parties. But I know that I’ve got to get us out of this, and _of course_ I’ll sleep on the floor while we’re here…”

But to his surprise, he finds her fingers on his lips, her thumb at the edge of his bottom lip. His voice turns into dust in his throat. For some reason, he feels like he can feel her fingerprints being etched into his skin with an ethereal heat.

“Stop,” she mumbles. “I think. I think it might be a good thing at the end of the day. I think it might be good that they think that we’re… married.”

He opens his eyes slowly, staring at her. His brows knit together, trying to figure out the lines in her face, trying to understand how the palm of her hand feels like a small bolt of lightning onto his skin. “Sansa? How can we… this is a lie that will fall apart easily.”

Her hand doesn’t move. But her thumb, only the smallest bit, moves closer to his mouth. Her lips are frowning. “Perhaps,” she said. “But we never claimed we were married. They only assumed.”

“I don’t think the Skagosi are ones to mince words,” He said, trying for a small smile, but it pushed his lips closer to her burning thumb. “I don’t think they’ll be amused by us allowing them to assume. No, Sansa, I really think we should tell the truth…”

“Jon, please. _Please_.” There’s something in her voice that makes his heart hitch inside his chest. He searches her eyes and they are dark with pleading; he lets her speak: “From my first breathe, my life has been promised to someone else. Baratheons, Tyrells, Lannisters, Boltons. Twice married, Jon, twice! And I haven’t even seen my twentieth nameday. I just...” She stops, sets her lips firmly.

Her fingers curl gently against his jawline, and he tries to swallow a searing emotion that is rising in his throat. Her voice is only a whisper now, “At the end of the day, the best alliances are made in the marriage bed, and if the Skagosi suspect that we are both… eligible… they might try to arrange such an alliance. And I _can’t_ , Jon. Not now. Please give me a single fortnight that I belong solely to my birthname. Give me… let’s just be us for a while, Jon. Let us be our father’s children and no one else’s. Not the Night’s Watch. Not constantly betrothed. Just House Stark, just _us_.”

He feel like he can’t breathe, like she has captured him somehow with just the edge of her grasp. Her words press again him and when he meets her eyes, he understands: the two of them, both trying to escape the home they were born into for so long, running to the Night’s Watch, running to Southern thrones, only to discover that they belonged only to their home, they belonged to _each other_. He feels that so deeply in his bones, it’s like a bolt of lightening that changes him, like he’s been resurrected once again.

All that rolls through him, but all he can say through his parched throat is, “Okay, Sansa. Yes. Just us.”

Her eyes soften for a second, then turn fiery. “Yes? Do you promise, Jon? We stay together. Promise me that.”

And when he says, “I promise,” all he can see is those stormy eyes and her pale face and something inside him groans with the declaration that _you’re done for, Jon Snow, she’s got all of you now, there’s no turning back now_.  


	3. Bedroom Skagos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She realizes that she has never been kissed, not really, at least not like this. She had felt the cruel lips of Joffrey, had known the metallic taste of Ramsey’s mouth as he pried hers open angrily. She had known chaste kisses, the kisses of another - yet kind - husband on the flat, soft top of her hand. But none of them were like this, and even though her mind tries to force her back, to invite the old Sansa Stark back in the room to chide her and set her in a Lady’s right place, her body betrays her. A thought creeps in, dark and slithery and deliciously dangerous: I am a Queen…. I make the rules now."
> 
> This is fluffier than I expected. No apologies.

There are three times that Sansa Stark had been thoroughly drunk before. She usually didn’t enjoy the feeling, the sloshing of your thoughts, the slowing of reflexes. If the world had taught her one thing, it was that it never paid well to be a duller blade. The world was out for the kill, and having the name “Stark” branded in your blood put you at a greater risk. So, generally, she would sip slow on a lukewarm glass of wine, would pass on a pint of ale when offered, avoid a slurred brain, keep herself forever at the ready.

But Skagosi mead was different: it was sweet, turned dangerously warm in her gut, and the people here were a familiar sort. Their raucous laughter was unashamed, was void of pretension. It was a perfect foil of the shaded conversations of King's Landing, the opposite of the calculated moves that Lord Baelish had learned her. It was a pure moment of celebration, one for a full belly and a mead-stained mouth.

And so she takes another mouthful of mead, lets it go down smoothly and feels it settle into her chest. The Great Hall is littered with food scraps, with hearty laughter, with the musky smell of men and women who are more giant and myth than human.

She leans back and looks at the long row of people at their table. King Thuran sits in the middle with a goblet as wide and tall as a direwolf’s head, Lady Leona cuts into a large portion of some kind of dark meat next to him. She raises her head and shouts to someone across the hall to, “go fuck yeself you large oaf,” but a grin spreads across her face and a cacophony of good-natured rumblings echo back at her.

Next to her, Jon leans over his plate, his fist knuckling his own heavy pint of mead. One lone black curl has made its way from the tie at the back of his skull and has fallen into his dark eyes. He’s heard Leona shouting and a smile graces his face, a smile that is void of the speck of darkness that usually abides there. A flush of blood is in his cheeks and it dawns on her slowly that the both of them have been drinking too much, far too much. She wants to blink back to smogginess in her brain, sober quickly. After all, they are in a nation of strangers, ones who are large and may still be gruff with House Stark. They may see no need to heed the warning of these small people from the South, this bastard King and his red-headed Queen. They may see the need to spill blood and both her and Jon would be far too full of wine and meat to know that their deaths were even in the running.

The rise of panic comes in her gut, but suddenly, there is a wide warm palm against her knee. She blinks up at Jon, whose smile has disintegrated and been replaced with wide, watery dark eyes.

“Sansa, what’s wrong?” He asks, his voice low, almost a whisper. His fingers curl slightly against her knee, she can feel his question even down to his the way his thumb rests on the outside of her leg.

Shaking her head, she mutters, “We can’t be here now. We need… where is Ghost?” Her eyes scan the room, but she sees no sign of the mountain of white fur that belongs to the last of the Stark direwolves.

The hand leaves her knee and she feels two rough fingers against her chin, turning her face. She finds she cannot stop herself, she’s looking at him, his eyes are on her, staring into her own. His eyes find her somewhere in her chest somehow, a speeding of her heart. It has come to her in the past couple of weeks that their eyes had never truly met in the past when they were still summer children. And now, she realizes that the darkness of his eyes are a magnet, she can’t look away, it’s impossible, a fruitless task.

“Sansa,” he breathes again, “talk to me. What’s happening?”

She frowns, but she cannot look away, cannot tear her eyes from the scar that glows pale across his face from eyebrow to the crest of his cheekbone.

The words that come out of her mouth are all mead-laced, are passing her lips before she has approved of them: “I need to go back to the room. Our room. I can’t be here right now.”

It’s a moment a weakness, she knows this, but the panic is swallowing her up, all the way to her throat. It’s choking her, taking her down.

Jon doesn’t question. He nods quickly, turns slightly to Lady Leona, who has a full mouth of dark meat in her jaws. Something is exchanged between the two of them, and she swivels her head towards Sansa and guffaws: “Skagosi Mead isn’t to be quarreled with, Cousin Sansa. I suggest your Lord take you back so that you are ready to hunt your own unicorn tomorrow.”

Her words are muddy from the alcohol, but she says, “Are they actually real? Unicorns, I mean?”

There’s laughter, and she finds that she is being brought away from the scene of the Great Hall in front of her, away from the fairy moss-lit room, away from the musty smell of warriors. It’s his hands around her waist that guide her, his hands unsheathed from their normal leather gloves and pressed against the narrowest part of her midsection. Her head lolls on his shoulder. She mumbles, “It isn’t safe. It’s never safe, Jon Snow.”

His voice is delayed, but he finally says back, his breath hot against her ear, “You’re going to be okay, Sansa. I promised you that, and gods help me if I can’t keep that promise.”

His arm keeps her steady, but she feels like she’s falling through the twisting cave hallways. Panic is a steady throng in her head and all she can think is the way Rob and Catelyn Stark met their end, amongst what they thought they were friends, amongst good strong wine and broken bread.  

Next thing, they are in their room. A fire is still roaring and she can see through wavy vision that Ghost is lying beside it. His giant white head raises when they enter before he cocks it to the side in inquiry.

She clings to the leathered straps of his cloak, the one she had made meticulously over their weeks at Castle Black. “Close the doors, Jon.”

He looks down at her and she finds the flush of mead in his cheeks. His face is close and she can see all the furrow of his brow when he says, “Okay, I will. But then you have to tell me what's going on.”

She nods, tries to swallow a lump in her throat. She manages to uncoil her fingers from him, but keeps her eyes on his face.

Jon blinks at her, worry etched deeply into his face. He walks to the door, closes the heavy wooden thing as quickly as he can. He stops, glares at the door before turning back to her.

There is a darkness in his eyes when he looks at her, a questioning in the way they gleam in the firelight. His voice is raspy when he asks, “Now, what in the seven hells is going on, Sansa? We probably just offended an entire hall of anger-prone Skagosi who have a propensity to threaten to eat our livers.”

His words find her in a sickening churning in her gut. She wants to throw everything up inside of her, wants to turn herself inside out. She’s been a fool _for so long_ , she thinks. A fool about everything. The world isn’t safe, not for people like her, and now she has compromised herself. Again. And not just herself, she has compromised the man who is staring at her with deep, dark eyes.

She can’t help herself, she can’t stop her mind. These thoughts roll through her mind like a wave of pain: Joffrey’s cruel gaze as she finds the King she hoped she would marry someday is a myth; Cersei Lannister’s nails digging into the thin flesh of her wrist; Petyr’s wry grin after he pressed his lips to hers like a wound; Ramsey Bolton’s nailbeds underlined in the blood of her body. All these things push on her like a great weight and suddenly Sansa finds breath hard to come by. Her lungs are on fire, she inhales but nothing comes through and she claws at her ribcage.

“I can’t… I can’t breathe,” she rasps out, moving to the clasps at the back of her dress. “Jon, help me get this off. _I can’t breathe_.”

Her vision swims, but she knows he’s there because she feels his calloused fingers against her own, trying to unclasp the tiny metals rings that line the entire length of her dress.

“Hold on, Sansa,” she hears him breathe, his voice barely disguising his own panic. “I’m trying to go as fast as I can. I’m sorry... there’s so many of these damned things.”

“Just rip it,” she wheezes. “Just get it off me, please.”

There’s only a brief pause and through the white-hot images that pulse through her brain and push against her chest she feels a tiny bell of warning in her head. Old Sansa, the wide-eyed naive child, comes through thick in her brain and says that this isn’t right, this isn’t _proper_. But she squashes it quickly, tells that voice to rot. She wonders if Jon hears it as well, that little voice that once told them that honor and propriety are things worth dying for, because there is a brief second where he does nothing, doesn’t even breathe. But then she feels the slight pressure of his knuckles against her shoulder blades and he does it, he rips the dress clean down to the small of her back.

Air rushes into her lungs almost painfully, and she gasps greedily at it. Slowly, she feels the panic inside of her curl up, reduce itself, turn only into a cool but tiny bundle that she realizes will forever live in her. The buzz of mead fills her brain. She takes one last deep breath before mumbling, “Oh, Jon. I’m… so sorry.”

She cranes her neck slowly to look at him, dreading the look of anger she is sure he will find in his face, the look of pure disgust that is sure to be painted on her face. She has been a stupid little girl once again, the stupid little girl who lets her emotions get the better of her.  

But when she sees his face, it’s not at all what she expected. His eyes are soft, his eyebrows knitted together. His eyes are staring at her back, at the wide swath of her pale skin that is exposed from behind the velvet of her dress. Again, a part of her says to quickly cover up, that’s it’s improper for her to be standing there almost naked. A sob dies in her throat as they stand in silence

“Did he… did he do that to you?” He asks, and his voice is low but there’s a strong current of danger behind it. Finally, his eyes meet hers and she feels a little piece of herself break inside her chest. There’s something in his gaze that speaks of sadness, of longing, of a simmering anger that sends a shiver down her body.

He reaches out, gingerly, and touches one of the many tight, pink scars that crisscross the wing-like blades of her shoulders. “How could he?” He asks so quietly it’s almost a whisper.

She knows she should, but she doesn’t flinch from his touch. Watching his face, she says, “Ramsey Bolton was a man who reveled in combining pleasure and pain. His pleasure, my pain.” She shrugs and feels the warm press of his thumb against her body. “I’ve found that Ramsey wasn’t a rare breed, though. Believe it or not, the things… he did to me… weren’t the worst thing to happen to me.” She pauses to clear her throat, to make sure her words are steady when she says, “It seems that all men want is to use your body in one way or another.”

His eyes flicker to her, and the anger and sadness multiply there. “Sansa… I’m…” and his voice trails off, his eyes moving again to her bared back. The line of his jaw sets, stony, and then he growls, “I wish the God of Light would bring him back so that we could kill him again.”

Something like a sob and a laugh comes out of her mouth, and she covers her face. The mead is buzzing again in her brain, but this time she lets it wash over her like a warm bath. For once, she feels a semblance of safety, here with her dress torn and Jon’s coal-hot fingerprints pressed against her spine.

Then, grinning she says softly, “It’s nothing, truly. We all have scars, now, after all.” She raises her eyebrows at him. It’s her attempt at breaking the mood, to try to navigate the discussion away from her breakdown and bring everything back to the fact that this man in front of her was raised from the dead. _What’s a couple unhappy marriages to a death-filled mutiny?_ She thinks, but his eyes never leave the scars the line her back. His stare is so intense that she finds herself sinking into it, finds that she doesn’t mind that his hand is pressed full against her shoulder blades.

"No man should have the right to treat someone like that," he says, and the tip of his forefinger runs across a scar further down her back. Something hot and surprisingly pleasant rolls through her body, catches her off guard. Sansa gulps dryly.

"Doesn't matter what's right," she breathes. "Men do as they please. It's all a game and if you're not clever they will leave you as many scars as they wish to grace you with."

His hand stops briefly at the small of back, at the crest of where her hips begin. Out of the corner of her eye she sees him stare at her face sorrowfully. "That's not how it should work, Sansa. And I'll die before it happens to you again. I'll never let a man touch you like that again."

She tries a smile, but it feels much more like a grimace. "I beginning to believe that the gods are not keen on the idea of me ever knowing a kind man's touch. The only husband that treated me well wouldn't have me to bed." His hand presses firmly yet gently against the curve of her waist, his thumb brushing the one long scar she knows lives there. "It seems that a cruel man's touch is all I'll ever know." Her voice comes out strangled, because where Jon's hands rest, it feels like a lightening bolt, one that strikes right to the core of her; she can hardly breathe, but the hotness in her lungs feels wonderful this time, not panic-filled.

"You deserved to be touched right by a man," he whispers and his fingers curl against her waist. He takes a step closer so that his chest is pressed lightly against her back.

It enters in the fog of her brain that they are both drunk. Jon smells of musk and mead and she knows that her mind is still spinning. And even through the mist of the alcohol thumping through her veins, she feels a sense of foreboding because something Jon has said should give her alarm: _You deserved to be touched right by a man_ . The old part of her that was once a Southern lady of the court wants to chide him. He's a King now, and he shouldn't be here, running his fingers along her spine. But she can't do it, cannot rebuke him, and she finds the most surprising part of it all is that _she doesn't want to._ She isn't sure what she really wants, the thought won't come to her within her inebriated thoughts, but she knows that she can't stop something strange that has been put into motion.

Without thinking, she reaches her hand towards his, resting hers on top of where he held her side. She hears him suck in a thin wisp of air, but his hand stays steady.

"You're a good man, Jon," she says. Her dress falls over her shoulder, exposing almost the entire length of her arm, the crest of her breast, but she can't bring herself to stop it from falling. "But the fact is that the gods want what they want. They want me to pay for being a silly girl who believed that a betrothed marriage would be perfect. It's what the gods will."

"Well, then, fuck the gods," he growls. He steps closer so that all of him is flush against her back. Lightning shoots through her entirely and she gasps in delight and surprise and something else, she can't stop herself.

And then it happens: his mouth finds the tip of her shoulder blade first, the place where the bone stuck out like a broken wing. It's where not only Ramsey struck her, it also sings of Joffrey and of her Aunt Lysa. It's a cruel and ugly scar, she knows, etched almost all the way to her bone marrow.

But his lips press against it, feather-light. Her lungs turn into coals inside her and every breath burns inside her.

His mouth moves slightly up her shoulder blade, lips grazing up to her neck, the place where the last wisp of a pinkened scar curls up onto the nape of her neck. A ball of heat grows in the middle of her, something she has never truly felt before, but she recognizes it in a way someone might understand their first falling star, the first glimpse of an ocean. And it explodes inside of her, all of it turning into a warm wash of realization that this moment has been building, she should have been expecting it. It’s a narrative that started the day they both left their home and the Stark name and now all they need it the very thing they’ve been running for: they need their own blood, the ferocity of wolf and ice. And even though a part of her whispers _brother_ inside her being, another part dismisses it so easily it was like washing away blood from a wound.

It’s when the warmness of his mouth finds her pulse that is thrumming in her throat, she surrenders herself to the mead swimming in her brain, the warmth of his hand resting gently on the top of her hip, to the notion that this is part of a story that the gods have been knitting together for the both of them. A moan escapes her lips and she arches her body closer to him, to his mouth against her neck.

She turns, meets his dark eyes. He stops for a second, and his eyebrows are knitted together. She can see the thoughts inside him churning over, can feel him pause; Jon Snow is a man of honor, a man who only bares his fangs when needed, he is a beast loyal to his vows, not a man who wants to allow the buzz of wine and red hair to teeter him over the edge.

“Sansa…” he growls, and she knows what it means, knows his words already when he continues: “Forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” she whispers and then reaches up, curls her fingers against the fabric of his shirt and pulls his face down. Her lips crash into his so as to show him that this isn’t chaste, she means nothing of the sort. So to show that she wants his body flush against hers and his mouth hot against hers.

There’s only the smallest moment of pause from him, she feels it in the way his fingers barely rest against the edge of her jaw. But then he groans into her mouth, and he pulls her closer, one warm palm pressed against the bare skin of her back and the other holding her face. His fingertips tangle into the thick braid that falls against the nape of her neck. He grabs the base of it, pulls it gently so that her mouth arches up further into his.

She realizes that she has never been kissed, not really, at least not like _this_ . She had felt the cruel lips of Joffrey, had known the metallic taste of Ramsey’s mouth as he pried hers open angrily. She had known chaste kisses, the kisses of another - yet kind - husband on the flat, soft top of her hand. But none of them were like this, and even though her mind tries to force her back, to invite the old Sansa Stark back in the room to chide her and set her in a Lady’s right place, her body betrays her. A thought creeps in, dark and slithery and deliciously dangerous: _I am a Queen…. I make the rules now_.

And now, with body pressed against hers, his one hand now clutching the small of her waist, she knows three things: his mouth tastes like honey and sandalwood, she will surely be punished by the gods, and that could care less about the punishment if it means that she can feel her skin pleasantly burn against his own.

He leans over her, pressing her back against the stone wall of the cave. Her torn dress is sliding further down her body and she knows it’s only a matter of time before it falls off her. She reaches down, curls her fingers into his belt loops and pulls his hips against hers.

“Sansa…” he groans against her lips, and his voice is half-apologetic and half-drowning in something that is coursing steady through her veins: _desire_. Desire, it flares through her like the feeling of good strong mead, it’s taking over and when she presses her body even closer to his, it feels like a thousand needles of it are flowing through her bloodstream.

His grip on her hair on the nape her neck tightens slightly, and he mumbles, his lips grazing her own, “Please stop. I can’t… I can’t do it myself. Please stop me.”

“I will not,” she growls at him before she knows what she is saying. And then: “I cannot.”

She can feel his eyes on her, dark and burning and always filled with a level of morose, but she cannot look at him. It’s another moment that they are standing at, a moment on the brink, where her dress will fall and he could press his mouth against her neck and all would be very different. It’s a moment that the old Sansa would scream and fight against. But she feels that poor girl she once was fade away to only a echo inside her; that voice feels empty and strange, even when it whispers that the man who holds her is blood and kin should not hold each other like this, that’s what the gods say at least. That voice is almost nothing now, and the gods are almost nothing, just a wind that has passed through her bones and out of her soul.

And so her knuckles turn white against the top of his baldric where it fastens against his hipbone. It’s a complex knot, and her hands are slowed by the mead, so she stumbles. The fact of the matter is that she doesn’t know what she’s doing, not really. Her experience was grounded in political strategy, not ones of the flesh. However, the logical part of her mind was only a fuzzy warm spot now, and she felt something far more primal coursing through her, wolf’s blood buzzing inside her veins.

She’s almost undone the knot and her dress keeps creeping down her body but suddenly their door flies open, creaking loudly as it swings over on its heavy iron hinges. They both freeze, her fingers curled against the top of his belt.

She can't see towards the door, but she hears the mighty guffaw of Lady Leona who bellows, “Looks like I'm interrupting! My apologies, but we're about to toast to the hunt, and I figured you may wanta join us.”

Slowly, she meets his eyes, the weight of their embrace now fully dawning on the both of them. She searches them for only a second and hopes that he can see what her gaze is saying: _we must go._

“Yes, thank you, Lady Leona,” she says as steady as she can. “We will be right down.”

His eyes change as he whispers lowly at her, “Sansa, you don't have to…”

She shakes her head at him and he clenches his jaw in response; he knows it's a fruitless task to argue, even if she can tell it has irritated him.

“Very good!” Lady Leona yells cheerfully and then adds, “I'll let them know you'll need some… dressing time. Don't take too long though. The Skagosi are known for many things, but being patience itn’t one of them.” She leaves in a flurry of squeaky hinges and slamming doors and leaves them only in their silence.

He still has his hands tangled in her hair. He says slowly, “Sansa… I'm…”

“Could you help me into a dress?”

He blinks, nods slowly. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

She goes to the closet where her two other dresses lay hanging and pulls one out, made of gray wool and embroidered at the neckline with the Stark wolf crest. She shrugs her broken dress so that it falls to the ground, stands only in her smallclothes and steps out of the puddle of her dress underneath her. Slowly, quietly, she shoulders the gray dress, pulls the back so that it mostly covers the scars he had unearthed just recently.

“This one has far less buttons,” she says, trying to keep her voice light, but the air is haunted by the ghosts of just a few minutes ago.

His fingers work as deftly as a man can against the fabric-ed buttons of the dress. The pad of his thumb lingers for only a second on the scar his mouth once covered.

She turns, looks at him, meets his eyes boldly. For a second, she knows that she could say something and possibly wipe everything away. A clean slate. She could blame the mead, could blame her panicked-filled heart. It would be so easy and it would be the right move. She calculates it in her mead-filled head, and knows the two options: what is smart and what is desired.

She assumes she is choosing wrong when she says, “Don't ask for my forgiveness, Jon. There is no reason for it.”

“Sansa,” his voice is so low it rumbles, “you have to promise me that you will stop me. I don’t… I don’t think I can do it myself.”

Frowning, she says, “I told you that you shouldn’t make promises you cannot keep. I will not do it either.” His eyes turn dark and before he can respond she reaches out, straightens his shirt so that it appears smoother, less frumpled. Then, nodding in his direction, she says, “Let’s get to this toast. I don’t think the Skagosi will stand for any more rudeness from their Queen.”

They walk the way back towards the hall in silence, but his hands brushes hers once and she leans into it. He does not flinch away, and a part of her thrills and a part of her thinks, _oh no_.

The toast is a festive affair, the Skagosi apparently undeterred by their King and Queen’s previous sudden departure. The words that she offers them is generally good-natured, but her head is not there. Her mind is elsewhere, cloaked behind a fog of the warmness of his body pressed against hers. And even though she knows that she should stop this, whatever they have put into motion, she now notices everything: his hand at the small of her back when they climb up the stairs back to their room, the way that his dark eyes find hers when he closes the door to their room, the way he clears his throat and says, “I think it’s best if you get some sleep. I think they expect you to fully participate in this hunt.”

She nods. “You’re right.” Even with the mead and the night’s events coursing through her veins, she struggles to stifle a yawn.

Undressing takes shorter than she expected, but she needs his help since the Skagosi do not seem to be the sort that reserved servants for their highborns. He turns away when the dress falls to puddle around her feet, and a brief thought of turning back towards him rushes through her brain; she squashes it. The mead is leaving her body now, and a part of her insides are turning cold with the thought that she might have ruined everything.

But when she settles into the bed, Ghost automatically jumps in with her, assembles himself by her feet. And, soundlessly, Jon removes his baldric, offs his boots, crawls into the opposite of the bed. This time, though, his back doesn’t face her. He rolls over and meets her gaze with a pained expression.

“I think. I think we’re playing a dangerous game, Sansa,” he says finally, his voice whispery-quiet.

She meets his gaze, then says, “We’ve always been playing that game, Jon. We’ve just been waiting to meet up within that game. It was only a matter of time, and there’s no point fighting it.”

“I think we should. I mean, I think we should fight… whatever we’re doing.” He hand reaches out, hesitates for a second, and then his warm palm finds the side of her face, the tip of his fingers curled gently around her ear. “I promised I would protect you. The thing is that I don’t think I’ll be able to protect you against… me.”

His hand feels is a strong wave of heat that warms her entire body. She bites her lips, inches closer to him in the bed. “That’s why I told you not to promise that. It’s a promise that can’t be kept.”

“It should be. I should be able to keep at least that much of the promise,” he says, but his eyes move down to her lips, distracted. “The gods will punish me for sure.”

“One of the gods brought you back from the dead. I would say that at least one is on your side,” she says, smiling. “That’s one more god than me.”

He doesn’t smile when he says, “I’m no god, but I’m on your side, Sansa.”

She can’t help herself when she inches closer, presses her lips firmly against his for only a second. His fingers reach into her hair, draws her closer. It feels like she might not be able to breathe for a second, her whole body is on fire. She pulls away gently, leans her forehead against his, “Get some sleep, King Jon. We have unicorns to hunt tomorrow.”

Sleep comes quicker than she thought, his arm draped against the smallest part of her waist, the steady breathing of Ghost against her shins, and feeling oddly safe for the first time in forever.


	4. Keflavik Forest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Sansa’s eyes are fixed straight ahead again, at some target he can’t see. There is a steely determination in the way she repeats her movement, in the way she glares forward, as if her entire body is saying, I will get my kill, finally."
> 
> This may be a stupid long addition. Just ~feelings~ in this chapter. Plus unicorn hunting. Smut to follow? Most likely.

He has not told her this, he has told no one this. The official story is: when he died, he became nothing. He lied, lied to Ser Davos, lied to Melisandre. Or perhaps it wasn’t a lie. It was more of an abstraction, because death is strange, it’s hard to describe. How does a man know he’s living? He just does. How does a man know that he’s dead? He just does. Death was just a state of being that you just knew you had fallen into.

So, perhaps the best way to describe it was _nothing_ , this he realizes. It was a swampy blackness, a liquid obsidian that every part of his being was submerged in and being lost in. There was something comforting there, riding in a thick, soupy river of nothing. After a life of always striving to be good and kind and honorable and brave and always striving to shed the skin of a bastard son, to be _nothing_ felt beautiful in an empty sort of way.

This is the part that he has told no one: at some point, the darkness started to drown him. It filled his lungs, and it shocked him to suddenly realize that he had taken form, that suddenly he was in the body that was broken and cold on the side of the living.

And then, a light pierced the darkness. A thin shaft streamed from somewhere above him and it grew from needle-thin to the size of his body. A thought entered his mind that he should crawl to the light, that he needed to because his lungs were turning into coals inside him and the air was too thick and dark.

He clawed against the thin obsidian of the dead, moving so slowly he thought he might die again in the black wasteland. In fact, he almost gave up, almost let the smog take him back into nothingness; but then the light dissolved, turned honey-colored, changed form. The light silhouetted into something vaguely human, then shifted into what he couldn’t deny was a person and one he was almost sure he knew: lithe, woman-shaped, with a swathe of swirling red hair cloaking her face. Her fingers were outstretched to him, bidding him towards her.

His mind said, _Ygritte_. He was sure of it, was sure he had found her again in this ocean of death. Reunited, again. It calmed him, and he swam closer, sure she would take his hand and bring him with her into the inky goodness of the final sleep.

He was close, so close that his fingers were almost laced with hers. He reached, closer and closer still, but then something changed. Her hair parted, and a face stared back at him. It wasn’t Ygritte, he knew it, but her name doesn’t come to him until weeks afterward. Before he can think, before he can change his mind about the woman of light in front of him, he has grasped her hand and he is ripped from the soothing dark of the dead and thrust into the dirty and milky light of the living. The wounds that find him are still fresh across his clavicle and he has traitors to judge and he cannot ponder whom the woman could possibly be that brought him back.

_The Lord of the Light_ , says Melisandre and he had thought she might be right, that it might have been this strange god’s prophetess reaching out the space towards him to bring him back into the living.

But this is something he has not told anyone: it was not Ygritte or a priestess or any forsaken god. He knows this now.

It’s when Sansa Stark, Queen of the North, rides weary and worn through the gates of Castle Black and he sees her for the first time in many years that a realization floods into his brain suddenly and quickly and forcefully. It’s why seeing her startles him: it isn’t because he had assumed she might be dead or that he had assumed she wouldn’t come to him, of all people and come practically alone. It’s because he realizes in that moment when he sees her bruised but wonderfully shining face that she was the one.

It was her, Sansa Stark, who brought him back to the living.

He doesn’t know why, and he is sure she knows nothing of this. It might be a cruel trick of the gods. But the fact of the matter is that, for what he knows now, she ripped him back for a reason, and so now what can he do? How can he fight down the feeling that he is forever connected to her, that his soul it now connected by its very fiber to her? He had been to the plains of the dead and she was there waiting to bring him back for some purpose. He may have lied when he said that he would stay with her wherever out of loyalty to their father; of course, this was a part of it, he supposes. But the truth is that Jon Snow has decided that his new purpose is to be with her, to follow her to the ends of this new life. He is sure he doesn’t even have a choice in the matter, no more than the moon has a choice to chase the sun.

And it was her face that found him almost every night, in his dreams. Dreams of soupy obsidian, dreams of a growing light, a great pull towards the land of the living, her whirling red hair bringing him up for air.

He doesn’t know why it’s her that is the chosen one, this sister who was the farthest from him in their youth. Why this red-headed woman with her mother’s eyes was the one who reached into the depths of death and pulled him out. But the more he gets to know the fire-hot fortitude in Sansa Stark, and the more that he comes to find her steely strength that blossomed in the poor soil of pain and death, he finds that maybe they were always the same, were two children separated by mothers of different names. Two children who believed in honor, in goodness, in a desire to belong somewhere different than the home they grew up in. And now they both died to the children they once were and had risen new, different, but the core of them were still the same. It was as if their two paths started in the same place, diverged in a wood, and then came back once again.

The dream finds him that night that he can’t help himself, the night where the mead made his buried hopes unsurface themselves. Her lips were determined against his own and the warm press of her body against his was just too much, and Jon Snow became a man of his smaller instincts. So of course that night she finds him in his sleep, yanks him towards the living and he awakes with a start in the cold quarters of their Skagosi room.

Quickly, he scans the room: she is gone, even though the imprint of where she had laid is still pressed into the bed next to him. He shuts his eyes tight, tries to erase the memory of her pale flesh against his, but he cannot. He is a doomed man.

Jon rises, notices that Ghost is not lying at his normal spot by the hearth. The absence of both Sansa and Ghost makes panic rise bile-like in his throat, but he wills himself to dress quickly, assemble his baldric and vest and slide the ever-sharp blade of Longclaw into his sheath. He pays no attention to his appearance in the mirror, because he is sure he will only meet himself with dark circles under his eyes, with the sight of a man who realizes that the burning emotion in his chest may ruin not only him, but also the one woman who had yanked him from the dead.

He strides through the castle’s cavern hallways briskly, towards the cacophony that he can hear in the castle’s main courtyard. A mixture of raucous laughter, a plethora of obscenities and the yapping of hounds meet his ears and when he rounds the corner and breathes the startlingly crisp air outside the cave, he finds a pack of around forty men and women gathered in the courtyard around the great weirwood tree.

He scans the courtyard, panic ringing high in his brain. He sees nothing of the white furry mountain that is Ghost and no glimpse of a head of crimson hair and he almost shouts out her name, but a voice interrupts him: “Ay! Queen Sansa, it seems your king has roused himself from his beauty sleep!” King Thuran’s hearty laughter follows his sudden interjection, and Jon can see the giant king stride across the courtyard towards him. A wide grin splits Thuran’s face and Jon suddenly realizes that three of his front teeth are made completely of dragonglass.

But, it isn’t the sight of this giant of a man and his dark smile that makes his heart lurch; it’s when she turns, the hood of her fur coat shielding the top of her head, that something strange hammers against his sternum.

She’s fully dressed, and wearing an ensemble that is thoroughly Skagosi: a thick fur coat, wool breeches, and a pair of leather boots that scale all the way up to her mid-thigh. When she sees him, she lifts an eyebrow and strolls up to him slowly.

“Ye must have worn him out last night!” King Thuran bellows at Sansa and gives a wink in her direction.

A flame of something like a mixture between anger and shame growls inside him and he can’t help but throw a dark glance at Thuran. In response, Thuran throws up his hands in joking-surrender, and chuckles, “Please forgive, King Snow. We are not a people of pleasantries like our cousins in the South. Although, speaking of pleasantries, please let me introduce you to my lead of the hunt, Queen Dagfinna, my wife, Lady of the Kingshouse.”

As if on cue, a woman even larger than Thuran cranes her head in their direction and thunders over to them. She’s the largest human that he’s ever seen south of the Wall, and she towers over all of them, him and Sansa, over everyone is the courtyard. Her nose is pierced like her husband, straight through the septum with a iron rod. She has large, dark eyes that seem alert and kind and perceptive. Her hair is shaved almost to the skull, where a complex web of green tattoos dance all the way to her earlobes. Despite her looking nothing like the ladies of the South, there’s something alarmingly stunning about her, something that commands attention even more than her giant King husband.

“Apologies, King Jon, for my absence last night,” she says, and her voice rumbles baritone throughout the courtyard.  “But you’ll understand: wild boars don’t hunt themselves.” And this is a joke apparently, as it strikes her and King Thuran as hilarious and they both laugh uproariously. Queen Dagfinna slaps Jon joyously at his back and he steels his spine from keeping his body from lurching forward at the force of the impact

He glances over at Sansa; a small, hesitant grin spreads across her face and he can’t help but find a ghost of a smile playing on his own lips. He steals a small glance quickly over face, noticing that she looks far more rested that he had suspected, her cheeks flushed with the cold and her gaze bright in the morning.  The panic that filled her eyes yesterday is either gone or covered with a thin sheen of steely Tully gray; he can’t be sure of which one it is.

Sansa catches his glance and says with a mischievous glint in her eye, “Forgive our King… he needs his sleep. Being brought back to life is not an easy task to recover speedily from.”

“Aye!” Dagfinna yelps and then adds, “Then the rumors are true then, yes? Some southern god thought you were too pretty to let die?” The giant Queen reaches over, pinches one of his cheeks like she might a child and then laughs rowdily. Next to him, Sansa stifles a chuckle and he shoots her a fake-indignant glare.

“All right, you two love birds,” Dagfinna says and then shouts out to the courtyard, “The sun is short now that winter is here and we must haste… Our King and Queen’s unicorn awaits!”

The courtyard shouts in agreement and suddenly there is a flurry of activity around them: men and women scuffling to finish tacking up their horses, dogs howling in anticipation, the bellows of Dagfinna shouting to her team of hunters.

Thuran and Dagfinna leave them relatively alone in the courtyard, and he feels a strange sort of panic rise in his throat again, this time because the weight of the evening comes flashing through his mind: the way her torn dress fell away from her shoulders, exposing the length of her arm; the warmth of her skin when he pressed his lips against the criss-cross scars on her back; the burning feeling in his heart when she curled her fingers against him and drew her mouth up to his. He shuts his eyes tightly together for a brief second and tries to still his thuddering heart, tries to erase the images from his head. He used to be a man full of honor, full of fight, but it seems that it was the gods cruel trick to bring bring him back to life only to make every part of him ache desperately for this woman next to him, the once-distant sister now transformed into a force of nature he can’t help but gravitate to.

A voice cuts cleanly through his thoughts: “You look awful.”

He opens his eyes slowly to be met with her cocky grin. He frowns before grumbling, “That’s probably because you scared the shite out of me this morning, taking off without even mentioning where you’re going.”

She takes a step closer to him and inspects his face. “I tried to wake you, but you were sleeping like the dead. I thought the sleep would do you good.”

His frown deepens. “Try harder next time.”

Shaking her head, she takes a step closer. “You may be my older brother, Jon, but you are not my commander.” The mention of the word _brother_ shakes him, but she looks completely non-plussed.

He blinks and then says lowly, “It makes it hard to protect you if you’ve disappeared.”

“I thought we agreed that I don’t need protection?” She counters quickly, raising an eyebrow. His heart stops, the memory of her next to him in the expanse of their Skagosi bed, her hair tangled in his fingers, their conversation playing out in his head:

_The thing is that I don’t think I’ll be able to protect you against… me._

_That’s why I told you not to promise that. It’s a promise that can’t be kept._

Before he can say anything, she removes one of her wool-and-leather gloves and licks the pad of her thumb. Reaching up, she smoothes down his eyebrow, rubs vigorously at the space between his ear and eye, mumbling, “How you manage to get so dirty drinking mead and buttoning dresses, I don’t know, Jon Snow.”

He grins sheepishly, a part of him realizing that he’s neverbeen touched like this, not ever. Catelyn Stark was never the one to dote on him, and his Father wasn’t one to worry too much for his own personal appearance let alone his son’s. Ygritte was warm in her own unique way, like a wildfire might be warm. But no woman has ever laid a caring hand on his face in this sort of simple fashion. He can’t help himself, he leans into her touch and she notices, blinks up at him.

“Enough preening,” she says coyly and then nods over to where the Skagosi hunters were shouldering packs and sharpening their obsidian greatswords. “It’s time to hunt a unicorn.”

And, if on cue, the shaggy mound of Ghost leaps on him, front paws on his chest as if to beg him to come.

He can’t stop the reluctant grin on his face when he says, “Let’s go hunt a creature even stranger than you, Ghost.” The only response he receives is Ghost’s large pink tongue licking his face and Sansa’s infectious giggle.

* * *

“There’s two things you need to know about hunting a unicorn,” Lady Leona offers to the both of them. She is riding alongside them on her shaggy horse,  the scar that splits her face facing them on the side they rode. “First thing: unicorns are not some fancy white horse. Remember: all the myths you've heard about Skagos are largely falsities and unicorns are part of that.” She adjusts the horn on her head, fastened tightly by its thick leather strap. She continues, “Unicorns could care less if you are a whore or a maiden. And they aren't really a horse at’ll, even.”

“What are they then?” Sansa asks next to him. He glances over and sees the icy sheen of her eyes, determined-set like her mother.

Leona shrugs. “Well, they're a unicorn I suppose. Nothing like them here or in Westeros or at the Wall or nowhere in the known world.”

“Well, that's helpful,” he mutters, trying to keep it to himself, but Leona apparently hears him and chuckles gutturally.

“I suppose if you've ever seen a well-muscled stallion with lion’s teeth and a tiger’s tail you might say you've seen a unicorn,” she offers and then adds, “But don't worry about looking for them. That's the second part of hunting unicorns ye should know: you don't hunt unicorns… _they hunt you_.”

Her words send a shiver down him spine and he stalls his horse. They are riding in an open field on the mountain’s plateau, and he watches Leona ride a couple paces away before she stops and glances back at him.

“What does that mean?” He asks lowly.

Leona smiles crookedly. “Means we gotta be smarter than them. They have to think we're unaware, bait them to us. Means we have to let them be the ones that attack first.”

His mouth grows dry, and he quickly finds himself glowering. His knuckles turn white against his grip on the reigns. “You didn’t say that this would put anyone in danger,” he growls in her direction, and his eyes betray him as they quickly divert over to where Sansa sits tall in the saddle.

“Jon…” Sansa warns, her voice imploring for him to carefully think his next words.

But before he can say anything, Leona pipes in, “Ain’t a thing under the sun that’s safe, King Jon.” She reaches into her horse’s pack and removes two weighty objects, carries them in the crook of her arm towards them. She offers one each to them and says, “But we aren’t fools to not properly arm our huntsmen. Take these; they’ll pierce the heart of even the largest Targaryen dragon.”

The weapons are large iron crossbows, surprisingly light for their size. A quiver of obsidian-tipped arrows were strapped to the crossbow barrel. They were impressive looking - the iron was etched with all three Skagos houses’ crests, the metal work finely done. However, the craftsmanship does little to assuage the sickening feeling in his stomach. The idea of throwing Sansa in the middle of hunt that involved luring some kind of mythological villain to hunt them like wild animals was completely unacceptable.

Thin-lipped, he steals a glimpse at Sansa and his objection dries up in his throat. She is glaring at the crossbow, her eyes full of some kind of fire that he has yet to see in her gaze.

“Sansa…” he says quietly. “What is it?”

he doesn’t look at him and then says, her eyes still hard on her weapon, “Joffrey had one of these. He was quite fond of it. In fact, he was quite fond of threatening my life with it.” She clenches her jaw tight. “I remember feeling the press of the end of his arrow against my chest and thinking how wonderful it would be to be the one on the other end of it. How lovely it would be to see his blood stain his own bow.” Her words come from somewhere deep inside, a pain buried far inside her.

A part of his heart breaks, a shattering from knowing that here was another wound deep inside her. A part of him breaks because he is sure he might not ever find all of them, all the abuses done to Sansa Stark over her few, short years. And it breaks because he realizes that he’s been a fool: this woman that he thought he could protect, she is more capable of protecting him than him of her.

Jon dips his head low, tries to keep his breathe steady, but the ache in his chest wounds him so profoundly that he feels light-headed.

Sansa doesn’t look at Jon as she shoulders the quiver, lifts the bow and points it to somewhere in the distance. “King Jon, will you show me how to aim properly?”

He swallows thickly, thinks for a brief second of refusing, of begging her to go back to the warm halls of the Kingshouse. But then, who is he to deny the woman in front of him?

Reluctantly, he dismounts his horse and stands next to her, offers a hand, “It’ll be easier if you’re on your own two feet.”

She stares down at him, the look of steel and anger still shining there. Then, she grabs his hands, jumps down from her horse and follows him as he walks several paces away from where the Skagosi hunters were gathering to develop a strategy.

He faces her and says, “I’ll have to say this or else I will regret that I don’t: I don’t want you going on this hunt.”

She nods her head and says, “I know. But please, Jon. We need these people’s respect, and if I walk away… what kind of Queen would I be when their Queen leads the hunt?”

Holding her determined gaze, Jon sighs. Then, reaching out so that his palm is flat against the bow’s forearm, he lifts up the crossbow so that is parallel with her body. “You want to shoot from your side. The bow will kick back, so you’ll need your arm to guard your core.”

Reaching out, he gently grabs her shoulders and shifts them so that she is standing sidewise to the bow. He shadows her body, reaches around her to lift her arms.

“You need a perpendicular angle from your target. Pretend your target is directly in front of you,” he raises her arms so that the weapon is pointed right directly in front of her. Then he pulls it closer to her body. “Now pull your arms against your ribs, and tip her hand against the hook here in the forearm. You now have a bench for your bow.”

“A bench?” She says and turns her face towards him, cocking an eyebrow. “Are these the fancy technical military terms learned to you at Castle Black?”

He gives her a dark look, but a grin pulls at his lips. “Do you want to learn how to shoot a bow or not, Sansa?”

She bites her bottom lip, suppressing a smile, and turns back to stare at the bow. “Continue, King Jon.”

He shifts so that he is pressed as lightly as he can against her body. He needs a clear head, not one confused by what her proximity does to him. “You will need an arrow from the quiver.” He plucks one from the pack on her back and then notes, “And always aim the broadhead of the arrow away from your body. They’re sharp for a reason.”

Taking the arrow gingerly, Sansa loads it into the barrel’s arrow track, starts to pull back the string, and he raises a hand, keeps her from drawing the string tight.

“Don’t load this until you’re ready to use it,” he says lowly, against her ear. “This is true for any weapon. Don’t ever draw it until you are absolutely sure you will need to use it.”

Sansa stares up at his face, and he realizes he’s too close, yet again. He takes a step back, blinks and says, “When you are ready to aim and your bow is loaded, make sure you focus is on your target.  You should rest your cheek on the comb...”

“The what?”

He frowns, realizing that he’s still talking to a girl who was more politician than warrior still, no matter how tough he is. “The comb,” he says, and reaches to tap the flattened stock at the end of the bow. “It’s made to rest your cheek while you keep your target in focus”

Resting her face against the comb, her eyes become very stony and he looks at where she is glaring: it is nowhere, but she has something in sight in her mind’s eye. A part of him wishes he could dive in her mind, share in her pure rage at whomever deserved this cool anger from her.

“And then you pull the trigger and you shoot,” he adds, unnecessarily, but she blinks quickly and nods her head, the swimming of her thoughts dissolving in the air amongst them.

She lowers the bow, raises it again, like he told her. Lowers once more, raises it once more. A swell of pride comes over him because she’s a quick learn, she pulls the weapon into a sturdy bench easily and smoothly. Then, nodding at him, she says softly, “Thank you, Jon.”

“Of course.” He clears his throat and jerks his head back at the Skagosi, who seemed to now be in a bawdy argument. “I think we should join our fellow huntsman or risk being left behind.”

She grins slightly before they start marching towards the pack of men and women who are engaging in an animated conversation. As they draw closer, the first words that reach him are, “They already know our patterns from last time. It aren’t of no use trying to replicate it.” A large man who a short, sandy-blonde beard boasts this, a man that Jon recognizes as Lord Stane’s youngest son, whose face is still teenager in youth but he’s already as tall as any adult male outside Skagos.

There’s a small uproar, but Leona interrupts quickly and says, “Myggrick is right: the herd’s new alpha is smarter than the one before her. The herd learns quicker from her as well. They will not fall for old tricks.”

A woman whom Jon doesn’t know pipes in behind him: “Aye, it may be true, but we’ve used the same cliff strategy for the last six hunts. I say that there’s no need to change something that works: we lead them to the Gray Bluff, act as if we are keeping lookout for Greyjoy's armada and then send them careening over the edge when they strike. ”

Leona pinches her lip tightly together. “The herd has changed since then. They’ve split, changed leadership. But we have something now that they’ve never seen before, something that they’re not expecting.” And then she looks at him and Sansa pointedly, a knowing look on her face.

A sinking feeling reaches him first in his gut and then all the way to his toes. He levels his eyes with Leona and declares flatly, “No.”

Sansa’s fingers reach his arm but he wills himself to ignore it. He glares down and her and says, “No. I forbid it. We are not a distraction to sit as bait. I will not have it.”

“My lord king, not bait!” Leona bellows as if this is an absurd notion. “You are no dumb rabbit left to fend for itself.” In front of her, she wipes a patch of cleared earth with her foot. With the tip of her boot she marks a couple lines and the draws an “x”. “The herd’s den is here, near the edge of the Bael River. We think they have around twenty in their herd that are of hunting age. A couple fouls, perhaps, but none old enough to worry about.” She draws a small “x” further away. “Usually, we lure the herd towards the Gray Bluffs, on the east tip of Kingshouse. They will try to attack us from the west, hopefully to catch us between the cliffs and the mountains, but we are able to lead them off the bluffs and catch them in copper netting before they go over the edge and crush their bones.”  

“What do you do when you catch them?” Sansa asks.

Leona raises an eyebrow. “We say a prayer to the old gods and slice their throats so clean they don’t even know that they’ve died.”

Her only reaction is a quick nod, her lips drawing tight. He thinks about the child of Sansa Stark who might have given a short sob at Leona’s reply. But the woman beside him merely grips her bow tightly, her knuckles whitening.

“But!” Leona interjects, her voice once again full of gusto. “Unicorns are crow-like: they are too smart for the same trick over and over, and they pass along lessons to their young. The alpha has changed, and she’s smarter than the one before her, the one who’s horn I wear on my head now.” There’s a mumbling of approval and Jon eyes the thick and dangerous looking horn strapped to Leona’s head. The only one with a larger horn is Dagfinna, who is keeping quiet and looking proudly at her daughter from the back of the crowd of hunters. “But we have a secret that they don’t know: we have the King of the North, a man brave enough to kill a white walker and live to tell the tale. But the herd don’t know that and we can surprise them by dividing and conquering.”

“Again, I forbid it,” Jon says, finding his voice turning icier by the second. He sees where the plan is heading and he doesn’t like it one bit. He knows this strategy, had studied it while at the Wall. It was a plan that involved sending a too-small pack of men, meant to look vulnerable, like they might be scouting out the enemy or spying amongst the land. It was meant to draw out the enemy, expose them like a wound, and then the rest of the army would cover them from their flanks, catch them on surprise. It involved a tremendous amount of planning, a higher level of camouflage, a ton of luck, and was oft a suicide mission for the first small pack of men who were meant to prove distracting.

And here he was, hearing he was this first small pack. And fine, he didn’t mind throwing himself into the fire. He wasn’t meant to be among the living anyway. But not _her_ , not Sansa Stark, he wouldn’t allow it, and he could feel a growing coal of fight in his gut start to burn.

But before he could speak further, Sansa says, her voice even, “We’d need assistance. Is there any among you that could join us?”

He finds his mouth go slack, realizing what she is suggesting. He growls lowly at her, “I will not allow you to go on this hunt, Sansa. You don’t know how dangerous a plan this is.”

She merely raises an eyebrow at him and says coolly, “ _I am going_. I would like you to join me, Jon, but I will go nevertheless.”

Anger rolls through him, hot as fire. For once, the option of exerting some old-fashioned seniority over her pops into his brain. He wants to say, “I am your King and you will do what I say.” He wants to say: “I am your brother, your father’s son, and I know what’s best.” He wants to say: “You did not pull me from the depths of death to watch you get killed in a foolish hunting accident.” But he knows all of this and yet he meets her gaze full of roiling Tully gusto and all he can do is shake his head and say, “We will need at least four men to accompany us. If it’s true that they teach their young, and that you killed their alpha, they may seek revenge from you, Leona. It may be best to keep you separate from us.”

“Or perhaps it would be best that you join us,” Sansa counters and the entire hunting party raises an eyebrow at her. “It would be easier to draw them out, expose them. Blood-lust is a powerful thing, and it can make the mind confused. Then, in their anger, we catch them unaware.”

He bites the inside of his cheek so hard that the bitter, metallic swell of blood covers his tongue. The fact of the matter is that she’s right, he knows that she is, but he was hoping to kill this tactic in its tracks before it was even suggested. But, to counter her now seems fruitless, would seem more like flexing a muscle rather than a show of real strength.

“Aye, it would be smarter to drive them out using Leona as a distraction,” he grumbles before adding, “But it would then be unnecessary for us to accompany her. Send her out with the best of your huntsman. We can bring up the flanking party.”

For a second, it almost seems like his suggestion might work. The men and women around him are quiet with thought, but then Dagfinna says lowly, “The herd knows that if Leona is accompanied by other Skagosi that they are being hunted. That’s why you must accompany her. You are strangers, and you are from a smaller race than us. You’ll appear weak to them, which is a needed distraction. Or do you think these unicorns are fools, King Jon?”  

He blinks, surprised at first and then suddenly irritated. “I must admit that I don’t know whether a unicorn is a fool or not. But I know that I am not one, and I will not risk the Queen of the North for the sake of a hunt. Even Kings and Queens can die at the hands of the great wild. That’s how the old king of Westeros lost his life and it’s been a world of war ever since then.”

The group is quiet for a long second, the tension so tangible that it settles like a lump in his throat.

It’s King Thuran who booms next, “Are you saying that you will not suffer your blood for a hunt, King Jon? It would be… a great dishonor to do so.”

He feels for the hilt of Longclaw, suddenly cursing that he agreed to this entire mission, had taken on the cause to recruit these giant men of the North. And now, like a fool, he trusted them, allowed them to convince him that once he broke bread with them that they were safe, that _she_ was safe. He readies himself, instinctively reaches out to her to grab her cloak in case they needed to flee quickly. 

Her voice slices through the tension quickly and knife-sharp, “Of course we will hunt with you.” All heads swivel towards her, and her pulls her hood down so that her determined set of jaw is easier to see, so that the flash of her red hair stuns all of them. “But King Jon is right: we need more men. Southern ladies are not trained in the art of the hunt. I would not only be perceived as a weakness by the herd... I would _be_ a weakness.”

He reaches out towards her without thinking, presses his palm against her arm. He wants to say that she is no weakness, but he understands her thought: her skill wasn’t with iron weapons, and her inexperience would be a disadvantage in a violent situation.

She continues, sparing him only a brief glance. “Is there no one in your party that might be still somewhat new the hunt? They might be able to join us?”

There was a pause and then the young Stane boy name Myggrick says, quietly, “This will only be my second hunt, and it has been seventeen moons since our last hunt. My beard has grown. It’s possible - if we mud me up - that they might not recognize me.”

Another younger Lord and a smaller Lady (although she was still about a head taller than himself and Sansa) chimed in that they had only been on the last hunt and they too might be unrecognizable to the herd. Together, the six of them regarded each other for a second before Leona slapped her gloved hands together and said, “Very well. Six is a lucky number, and a good group of young blood as well. We will mud Myggrick, Ardis, and Bryn and break away to the Keflavik Forest. We will set our nets, lure the herd out with the illusion that we are on the hunt for wild boar.” She reaches into her quiver, pulls out an obsidian tipped arrow and starts drawing the map out to the hunting party around them.

Jon kneels to get a closer look at the map, tries hard to memorize the strategy. He admits: it isn’t a bad plan, and Leona seems to have a firm and excellent grasp on military strategy, even if they are leading a group into a hunt rather than battle.

It eventually dawns on him that Sansa isn’t next to him, and her looks around frantically, scanning the crowd for her shock of red hair.

He finds her finally, about ten paces away from everyone. For once, she isn’t eying the plan, isn’t digesting it greedily like she would in almost all the meetings he convened with the Northern houses in the past couple fortnights.

Instead, she stands by herself, raising and lowering her bow. Ghost sits beside her, his blood-red intense eyes surveying the world around him.

Sansa’s eyes are fixed straight ahead again, at some target he can’t see. There is a steely determination in the way she repeats her movement, in the way she glares forward, as if her entire body is saying, _I will get my kill, finally_.

* * *

They ride for almost an hour before reaching the swampy Keflavik Forest which dips into the lowlands of Skagos. There’s an odd presence, he thinks, a strange uneasiness that invades his bones.

Leona, as if sensing his wariness, says, “This land is sacred, the birthplace of the old gods. And although the South likes to pretend that dragons are creatures of their realm, but the truth is that all magic comes from the North. The first dragons fell from the moon and were hatched in this forest. Be careful of how you speak here, King Jon. The old gods are listening.”

At one time, he would have rolled his eyes at her, would have told her that the only gods that live in this world are the ones at the end of a sword. But he had seen too much of magic lately, had met giants, had seen the dead rise, had been one of the dead himself, so he merely keeps quiet at Leona’s statement and eyes the marshland around him with a steady alertness.

The illusion to present is that they are hunting boar, and they retract copper link nets from their saddle packs and set them in wait. Carefully, they lay swamp grass and dead leaves over the nets, packing some mud around the sides to make sure that they don’t move too easily.

“It won’t trick the unicorns,” Leona grumbles while moving some swamp weed with her toe. “But it may work in tricking them into believing that we’re out here hunting boar.”

“And we might catch a boar,” Sansa says with a coy inflection in her voice.

Leona chuckles and says, “Aye! We just might be doubly successful today, Queen Sansa.”

He glances at her, sees that her face is smudged with the green-brown of swamp mud. Pieces of her auburn hair sometimes catch in her mouth, and when she tries to move it away, more mud smears on her face.

He un-gloves his hand, licks the pad of his thumb. Lifting her chin, he wipes at her cheeks, trying best not to smear the mud even more across her face. He smiles crookedly into her face and says, “How you get so dirty laying nets, I cannot know.”

She tries to give him an irritated look, but it fails at the corner of her lips where a small smile grows. There’s a slight glow of color at her cheek and when her eyelids flutter so slightly, he realizes that he has taken a step towards her and his palm lays flat on her cheek. It happens in way that he doesn’t realize he’s doing it, and he feels a flood of guilt blossom in his throat. He has ruined everything, he thinks, he’s ruined everything by confusing this devotion he feels in his chest for something stronger, something more potent. Her reaction, her clinging to the seams of his shirt with her mouth hot against his, he imagines is only her need to find kindness in anyone, even this strange brother whom she used to stare at with untrusting Tully eyes.

Clearing his throat, Jon takes a step back and puts the gloves back on. Sansa’s smile falters, then the look on her face turns back to stony intensity as Leona begins speaking to the crowd of six of them: “The best bet is to actually hunt for boar, but to keep our instincts intact. The more we move, the more the herd will move. They will try to surround us and then move inwards, or they will attempt to break us apart and then pick us off one by one.”

His face must have paled, because Leona quickly interjects with, “But the rest of our troop will be following quietly and will be able to surround their flanks, or cut them off from an escape route. But in the meantime, let’s commence hunting for boar. Who knows? We may come home with both meat and horn tonight!”

The three other Skagosi cheer at that and he glowers over at them. They had spent a good quarter hour mudding themselves in order to make their appearance indistinguishable and their smell unfamiliar. To the unicorns at least. The combination of swamp mud and Skagosi sweat mingled in the air and even though Jon had smelled a mixture of terrible things in his lifetime, this was one that was one of his least favorite.

She appears to read his mind when she says, “The ground here… it smells like a little like… death?”

“Aye.” He nods his head at her. “It’s probably not the part of Skagos that we should use to advocate for an encampment on the island if needed.”

She wrinkles her nose. “It won’t be an easy sell anyway, even with the cannibalism myth being found false.”

“That will only serve to disappoint Tormund,” he says with a crooked grin and when a small laugh breaks through her lips, he finds a little part of his heart break. _Oh, no_ , he thinks before gritting his teeth, willing himself to not replay the scene from the other night in his head over and over again.

Being distracted comes easier than he thinks: they truly do try to hunt some boar, especially after they find some tracks imprinted muddily into the ground. They leave their horses back near their traps and take after the boar on foot because, “the ground here is a tricky bastard: it will swallow you alive in the matter of a couple square feet of ground you thought was solid,” Leona had told them.

“It sinks horses quicker than humans?” Sansa had asked.

“Ah, no,” Leona answered before adding, “But it takes longer to pull out a horse’s dead body than a human’s. And - like I said - us Skagosi are not a patient people.”

The hunt brought them up on a small ridge that leaned over the swamps. From here, they could see a small path where a pack of boar had tromped down into the swamp valley.

“They’re heading right into our traps,” Leona guffaws before landing one of her spine-crushing blows on Sansa’s back. “Hurry! The beasts are just begging to be our dinners.”

Sansa lurches forward at Leona’s well-meaning nudge, and he reaches out instinctively, grabbing her around the arm to keep her from tripping on the ridge’s rocky ground. Her body curls against his, her chest pressed tightly against the side of his ribs. Her heartbeat is a flutter of movement. Even through her thick fur coat, he could feel it pumping against his skin.

“Leona’s can be bit too zealous,” he says, smirking down at her. “Are you alright?”

For a brief second, she holds his gaze in a way that sets something near his lungs on fire. But then, she nods shortly and unfurls herself from his grip. Taking a step back, she smoothes her hair against her scalp and says, “We should go. They’re getting further from us.”

Tromping back down into the swamp, Jon caught not his first glimpse of the flanking party that was always watching them. They had mudded themselves and camouflaged their hair and clothes: if someone wasn’t look carefully, they might suspect that only a wild animal was moving about the bushes, but Jon knew the movements of human, caught the glimpse of metal that gleamed from Dagfinna and Thuran’s bold piercings, could hear the crackle of their low whisperings.

They loop around the land that perimeters the swamp. He realizes that they are rounding the back end of where the traps and nets are located; it strikes him as strange, as if the boar pack had rounded up to the top of the ridge and then started wrapping around it so that it was still on the outskirts of the swamp. The land here is densely wooded, and after a while, he realizes that the flanking Skagosi party has lost track of them within the woods. He doesn't see their rustling anymore, and it dawns on him that the small group of them are rather alone all of a sudden.

He slows the brisk pace that their group has taken, squinting at the ground. The tracks here are different from on top of the ridge , like the boar were taking off on a run. Like something had scared them to this place.

Like something had herded them here. Like something had brought them here... on purpose.

He’s barely able to grab Sansa’s coattail, jerking her back from where Leona and the other Skagosi warriors run onward towards the tracks. Her neck lurches back towards her, an irritated glimmer in her eyes.

“What in the seven hells,” she growls at him, her teeth gritted. Squirming, she snatches her coat away from his grasp and almost continues towards the rest of the group. But then, he suspects something dawns on her, or that she sees the look in his eyes. Her voice is quiet when she asks, “What is it, Jon?”

His heart stops for just a second, feels a knot tighten in his gut, because it all comes to him almost too late: the area they are in is perfect for an ambush, laying low in the swamp, surrounded by what looks like sinking sand, and riddled with their own concealed nets.

“It's a trap,” he says lowly. Then louder, to Leona and the other Skagosi: “It's… we’ve been led into a trap!”

Leona turns, raises an eyebrow. Her mouth opens as if to retort, but she stops, quickly takes stock of their surroundings. Her mouth closes when her eyes meet his, the look of realization glows in her gaze.

She's barely able to shout, “Retreat!” before the boar rip through the woods, stampeding towards the group.

Next to him, Sansa yelps, and he steps in front of her, quickly shielding her against the rush of giant boars descending into the swampy lowlands. These are boar of epic size, much like everything in Skagosi, and their tusks are gleaming ivory. As they thunder closer, he unsheathes Longclaw and tries to quiet his breathing.

_Panic will get you nowhere, Snow_ , he tells himself, repeats it in his head. _And you can’t afford to panic, not when you’ve dragged the Queen of the North on this fool’s hunt_.

He hears Leona shout, “Arm yourself, men!” and to the side of his vision, he sees a obsidian-tipped arrow fly, fast and fierce as it snaps from a crossbow. It meets the side of a boar that is almost upon both him and Sansa. The boar squeals and stumbles, then falls, sliding across the ground so that he has to push Sansa aside so that the body doesn’t slam into them. In the background, Leona releases a yelp of delight and he realizes it was her arrow that had found its kill.

Swiveling Longclaw, he takes a heavy-handed swipe at a boar descending towards them. It’s a clean kill. The sword’s steel slices through the bristly hide of the boar easily enough. A small spray of blood fountains towards them, and when he glances back at Sansa, her face is speckled in red-black blood.

She ignores the blood, or maybe doesn’t even notice it, because her eyes flash, focused on something in the distance. Her knuckles turn white around the grip on her crossbow and she growls, “This is only a distraction.”

He watches her wild eyes before saying, “What… what does that mean?” And then, he sees it, can see the battle plan laid before his eyes: like the battle for Winterfell, the Bolton troops surrounding them, encircling them so that they can strike them until their circle becomes smaller and smaller and then gone. Like a chokehold, the life squeezed out of them. Out of _her_. Out of this young woman that he had promised to protect, he had now brought her to her death, all for the sake of an alliance that might strengthen the grip on a throne he had no right - and no desire - to have. The pack of these mythological beasts had lured them into a tight knot of death, into a valley of their own death.  He sees all of this, and a panicked-induced adrenaline rolls through his veins.

He swivels his head towards her, outstretches his arm to give her a pushing head-start. “Run,” he says, locks eyes with her own before repeating, “Run now, Sansa.”

She shakes her head, a thick strand of her crimson hair clumping against a drop of blood near the corner of her mouth. “No. The King and Queen stick together now.”

A lump forms in his throat as her words echo through his head. Any objections he might have made die in his mouth, and he only clenches his teeth and nods his head. “Then we better both better run.” Grabbing her elbow, he starts running, towards the one opening in the swampy brush that he can see.  He yells back at the Skagosi that, “it’s all a trap! We’ve got to find the break in the herd while we can.”

Leona lets fly one more arrow, landing it squarely into the flank of an encroaching boar. A trickle of boar’s blood flows across her brow and almost into her eye, but she nods and shouts, “Get the hell out, soldiers!” The other three Skagosi set out a volley of arrows before turning towards Sansa and him, beginning the retreat. But he can see it in their eyes: a glowing fear, shiny and real in their gaze.

The group of them turn and run. Sansa’s pulse finds him to his fingertips, hammering hard against his skin. He grips tighter against her wrist, and her fingers in response wrap firmly around his forearm.

They are so close; their hunting group almost finds the clearing when they appear. The first of the herd rounds around a gnarled pine tree -- a shock of shaggy white fur and gleaming sharp teeth -- cutting off their path. The group of them skid to a halt, and Sansa sucks in a tight gasp of breath next to him.

For only the briefest of moments, he allows himself to eye the creature with a small moment of almost child-like awe: it’s a mound of muscle and myth, a creature that looks like nothing he has seen before in his life. Leona’s promise that a unicorn was a beast unto its own was not hyperbolic - the strange animal in front of him measures all of them with wide yellow eyes, as tall as a gelding and muscled thickly like a lion. Its mountainous head is long and narrow like a horse, but a row of sharp, blood-stained teeth jut out from the animal’s bottom jaw. Each muscle-rippled leg is capped with a hoof that peaks into what looks like a razor-edged tip. The massive horn that juts from its head is tipped black with blood-stain. When it crouches in front of them, he notices that it moves less like a horse and more like cat. For merely a breath, their entire group regards the unicorn, and it sizes them all quickly.

And then, Leona shouts, “Draw your swords. I know that bastard -- she’s the new alpha.” Jon looks at Leona, and there’s a dangerous glimmer in her eye, a fiery flash of anger and excitement. She yelps at the alpha, “Come on now, beastie. I’d be proud to wear your horn as well.”

Leona charges, even though he immediately knows it’s a mistake. The rest of the herd is there, hiding themselves in the woods, he could smell the metallic blood scent of their recent kills matted into their fur. And the flanking Skagosi party with Dagfinna’s troop? He was sure they were lost somewhere in this godforsaken forest.

He steps further in front of Sansa, shielding her with the full width of his shoulders.

“Stay close,” he growls at her, and she flicks her eyes up to his. Everything about her is steely: her clenched jaw, her icy gaze, the thin line of her lips. She nods quickly, firmly. He turns back to the fray, waiting for the impending ambush.

It comes: a blur of fur and gnashing teeth. Leona, just several paces in front of them, barely sidesteps a charging unicorn that dissolves from the depths of the forest surrounding them. The beast tries to stop itself from ramming into a tree, but it fails. The blood-soaked tip of its horn slams into the thick trunk of an old, broad tree and it holds the unicorn fast. Immediately, it tries to back out of the trap it has set for itself, writhing and bucking its powerful back legs.

Next to him, he hears something like a war cry emit from Bryn, the shorter of the Skagosi hunters that had joined them. The young man unsheathes his sword, makes a full run at the unicorn.

Jon can barely utter, “Don’t be foolish!” before the unicorn bucks once again, finding Bryn squarely in the gut. The young Skagosi flies backward, slams into a tree and a bone-crunching noise greets all of them. Bryn lies unmoving, his head curled towards his chest. It’s possibly he’s still alive, but there’s no time to check. Next to him, Sansa lets out a quick yelp. Ghost snarls.

Turning to the other Skagosi, he yells, “Keep your distance, and get the hell out of here if you can. This is no time to be the aggressive party… we’re alone out here if you haven’t noticed.”

Myggrick and Ardis eye their surroundings, their swords drawn. It seems to dawn on them rather suddenly that the Dagfinna’s party is not around them, and the only thing surrounding them is the enemy. Myggrick hands shake and his sword trembles. Ardis looks younger than Sansa, and her eyes are full of glittering fear. A sick twist of guilt knots his stomach - he had forgotten that these Skagosi, although large in stature, were still just kids, probably not much older than Arya would be.

Suddenly, Leona shouts back, her voice dangerous, “We can’t retreat, King Jon! It’s sure death if we do. A unicorn is not known to honor a surrender or a retreat.” She shifts her sword in her hand, backing away slowly as the new alpha starts inching her way closer to them. “We must fight… it is our only option.”

He swallows a lump in his throat. Deep in his gut, he knows that Leona is right, that the only option in front of them is one of blood. So he tries to still his heart, tries to find the extension of himself into Longclaw.

And then they come, the entire herd. There are about seven of them, but alpha leads them all. The herd makes a curved “v” formation that wraps around the group. The lone unicorn that was stuck in the tree violently thrashes out of its hold. He bucks one more time before turning on the five of them that are still standing. He can see the gleaming teeth and the burning gold eyes. Beside him, Sansa shivers against him. Ghost bares his teeth before issuing a deep warning howl.

The battle ensues in a flash and a whip. The herd charges, and Leona yells, “Aim! Hold!” Instinctively, he reaches behind to his quiver, plucks out an arrow, eyes Sansa behind him. Her hands are shaking, but her lips are set in a grim, determined line. She strings her crossbow, takes aim exactly like he had showed her earlier. She meets his stare, nods her head.

The herd is almost on top of them when Leona screams for them all to fire their weapons. The arrows snap and fly quickly to their targets. One - two - of the unicorns meet the arrows. They’re nonfatal wounds, hitched into the flanks. But the hits make the herd halt for a second; the alpha rears up her front legs, and then lands with a force that makes the soggy ground around them ripple.

“Again!” Leona shouts, and the entire group grabs and restrings their bow, takes aim.

But something changes. The herd breaks formation, the two hurt members galloping back into the forest. The alpha charges and the remaining three members of the herd surround them.

His eyes dart around their surroundings quickly, and he sees it for only a second: an open area that leads to an incline. If they could only get above these massive beasts, they would have the advantage, especially with the powerful crossbows

Sansa is aiming to fire again, but he grabs her wrist and starts pulling her towards the opening. He hears her curse rather loudly at him, but he simply yells back, “No time to argue! We’ve got to get to higher ground, and now’s our chance!”

She doesn’t respond for a brief second, and he thinks that she sees his logic, can see what he has planned. But then, she shouts, “Jon… we can’t... the nets!”

It dawns on him in a wave of nausea what she’s talking about, but it’s too late. He hears the snap of the net drawing taught, the ground falling away from them both and the only thing he can think is, _I have doomed us_.

Caught in their own net. Sansa slams against his body, their limbs tangled up in the trap they had carefully hid just a couple hours earlier. The net swings precariously back and forth, and the ground blurs underneath him. Longclaw flies out of his hand, leaving the both of them even more vulnerable.

He sees Ghost for only a second; the giant direwolf has escaped the the trap and is snarling at the approaching herd.

All he can scream is, “Ghost! Get the others!” and then the net sways violently into the thick trunk of a gnarled swamp tree. His skull finds the tree first, then his shoulder, and the collision sends stars flying in his eyes. His vision vignettes.

Through his blurry vision, he sees the alpha approach them, running at a swift speed. There’s nowhere to turn, he knows this. Leona takes a strike at one of the other members of the herd, and she finds a good slash. The unicorn whinnies, backs off and bares its teeth but makes no further moves. Leona turns, sees the both of them and makes a shout that sounds like a curse, starts pursuing the alpha. But the giant beast pays her no mind, continues on its path towards them, murder shining bright in its amber eyes. There’s nothing he can do but try to shield Sansa, his arms encompassing her frame easily and it dawns on her how small her bones are, how easy she might be to break. A thick stream of what he knows is his own blood flows down his brow, into his eyes. He doesn’t feel mad at his death, but a wave of anger flows through him knowing that he has led her into her own death.

But then he hears her voice, long and thing and echoey. It finds him like a metal-tinged whisper and then rams into his ears like a shout. It _is_ as shout. She is shouting at him and they are not dead yet.

He blinks, looks at her. She is positively glowering, and when her mouth moves, the words crash quickly into his brain.

“Jon, move!” Her voice rattles in his head.

“What?” He breathes, and she reaches across the very short space between them, pushes her elbow against his neck and shouts again, “Move your _fooking_ head!”

And it comes to him: her arms are free, even in the confines of the net. In her arms, tightly shelved against her ribs, is the crossbow, the tip of the obsidian arrow almost piercing the space between his eyebrows.

He turns, can see the alpha almost on top of them, can see the beast’s gleaming blood-stained teeth. Quickly he ducks his head, and his own blood obscures his vision, and his consciousness is a wavering thing now. There’s the sound of her crossbow unhitching, the shriek of a creature that sounded half like a frightened filly and a bobcat. The world is turning black, and sounds are long and far away. There’s a cut somewhere on his skull, he’s sure, and he tries to scrape on consciousness but it falls away from him like it’s being washed clean from his brain.

The last thing that Jon Snow, King of the North, sees before he falls over the edge of unconsciousness is something he’s sure his mind is making up a fever dream: the ground soaked with the blood of a dead alpha, a stunned looking Leona taking a knee, and a wave of Dagfinna’s hunting party pouring out of the inky woods, their broadswords drawn and the white fur of Ghost leading them towards the battle.

Then the world goes black, and he falls suddenly into a dreamless unconsciousness. 


End file.
